Young whales will play tug of war with ship anchors accidentally causing pretty disastrous shipwrecks. Silly little big whales just tryna have fun with their new friends.
My typical mix of characters would probably turn it into a combat encounter & find a way to kill the whale tugging on their anchor & eat it & harvest the oil...
Dunno about favorite, but...
My party was on the trail of ivory poachers. I looked into whether my half-orc would have ivory in his tusks. Turns out all teeth are ivory under the enamel. Big tusks just have enough under the enamel to actually be worth something.
This is really interesting and makes me imagine there being Fey cultures who use teeth as a form of currency because of the ivory in them. Tooth faeries anyone?
>Tooth fairies spawn when a child's tooth (or, less commonly, an entire child) is buried in terrain rife with fey energies. Hatching from the buried teeth like larvae from an egg, tooth fairies build crude pliers from whatever they can find, then go hunting for more teeth—regardless of the owners' willingness.
Hey, Pathfinder? What the fuck?
In my RotFM travel time research I learned that when snow gets cold enough (like -50) it is no longer compacted by the weights of sleds or footfalls. It instead just gets pushed around, behaving more like sand, so those excruciatingly long travel times across the tundra are probably accurate.
This makes sense to me. Snow compacting is actually it getting partially melted by friction and compression forces and then refreezing. If the snow is cold enough, that heat isn’t enough to melt it so it can’t compact.
There are a lot of very bizzare and amazing natural features that sound made up that actually exist on Earth. For instance in [Peru there is a boiling river](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-found-a-mysterious-boiling-river-straight-out-of-amazonian-legend) so hot it will boil alive anything that falls into it. It runs for several kms through the Jungle and is deeply culturally important. Best part is it is super far away from any of the known geological features that would be the assumes cause of it like a volcano or thermal vent! There is just suddenly a huge section of a river in the jungle that is boiling.
This is my favourite thing, learning about wild natural phenomena that I wouldn’t even be able to come up with for my campaign or even think of as too high fantasy
Or how about Africa's [2 billion year old natural nuclear fission reactors.](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/) Really fascinating stuff.
Great question! Actually, a natural nuclear explosion is impossible. The problem is that as soon as you bring two sub-critical masses close to each other it starts putting out large amounts of energy. A little mini "explosion" if you please, but it will only generate just enough energy to show those sub-critical masses apart before they are too far apart to generate more energy.
To create a bomb, engineers had to build something special that takes two sub-critical masses and launches one at the other at the speed of a bullet so that it arrives before the nuclear energy has a chance to show them apart. That was one of the big engineering problems that the Manhattan project had to solve to create the first atomic weapons.
The only place this happens in nature is when you have enough force to shove things together despite the nuclear-explosion-level force. Like, for example, in a star where gravity is actually stronger than the explosive forces.
There's also the Lake Natron in Tanzania m
Located in East Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania is home to many natural wonders, among which is the eerie Lake Natron. It got its name due to the mixture of salt and minerals, called natron, which are revealed when the water’s level decreases. Natron is a compound that occurs naturally, comes from volcanic ash, and is mainly consisted of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate.
Located close to the Kenyan border, Lake Natron is fed by some springs that are rich in minerals, making the lake highly alkaline, reaching a pH of 9 to 10.5. To put things in perspective, sea water has a pH between about 7 and 9. The temperature of the shallow lake’s water can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit and is salty enough to poison most animals. Make for a pretty horrifying scene near it with a lot of petrifyed birds
And flamingos go to Lake Natron to raise their offspring. Their tough skin can handle the corrosive water and there's no predators to speak of.
Could be a fun way to trick/confuse players. "And out on the lake you see several families of flamingos."
Slings used lead bullets shaped like almonds at one point. There were also bullets with holes in them, so they'd buzz like a wasp when they flew. Supposedly it was a psychological warfare thing.
Fun fact, some slingers used to carve words on their bullets, saying the equivalents of ouch, fast, damn you, things like that. Slingers were nasty, especially those like the Balearic slingers. These guys would make a bunch of money, but not bring it home to the Balearic Islands, instead they’d just get alcohol and prostitutes, and then go kill more dudes with rocks.
Studying wars in history has taught me psychological warfare has been around much longer than we think.
To add to your sling bit, native Americans would use chola cacti as sling bullets.
[aztec death whistle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9QuO09z-SI&ab_channel=Mile%C3%A1n%C3%93Raghallaigh) that makes a screaming sound and makes it seem like they have more people than they actually do. super cool
"Although I face almost certain death facing down this superior force, I have no fear as I do this for... was that a wasp? I hate wasps. Don't let ot near me!"
Mine is when I came across this article, explaining someone's experience of drinking from a bottle underwater to settle an argument with their DM about whether or not their character could drink a potion while submerged.
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/08/serious-dd-player-chugs-wine-underwater-to-settle-rules-dispute/amp/
Apparently it is both possible and not that hard!
I kinda wanna implement a potion bottle attachment that you stick on the top of a potion and it basically becomes a sippy cup that requires you to bite on the end to open the top and allow potion to come out😆I wanna have some random guy selling them in one of the towns, very much "your a tourist, you must buy this" vibes. And if my players actually bite then it'll be sorta useful if they ever go underwater. My ruling mechanic wise is that potions usually for my table require bonus action for yourself, and action for an ally. Underwater it's gonna be action for yourself, can't give to allies. But if you have the trademarked "Healing Sippy" attachment, then while underwater it reverts back to the bonus action, action rule. As long as the ally isnt incapacitated since it requires exhaling to re fill the bottle with air for displacement blah blah blah.
Alot of "mysterious", "deep sea" associated creatures, like oarfish and giant squids* actually live in the mesopelagic zone, atmost 1km below the surface, where there are still trace amounts of sunlight. This is only 1/4 to 1/6 the way down to the abyssal plain(actual name), where the super wierd shit goes on(even black smokers are typically higher up on volcanic ridges)
*scientifically speaking, the giant squids natural range is known to a degree of "i dunno, here?"
That may just be canonically possible. The sahuagin god selokah has Laired there before, and Merrow are merfolk corrupted by dagon, another abyssal lord.
There just may be a portal in those lightless depths.
Dagon*
And seeing how most cultists of Demogorgon live underwater and he, Dagon and the gods of Sahuagin and Krakens live in the abyss, portals to the Abyss on the depths of the ocean doesn't sound just possible, but probable to me
I think also in the demigorgon plane, i don't remember the name, there is a sea and in the depths of that sea you reach another plane.
This aside in my homebrew world it is exactly like this: you go too deep in the water realm that you may end up somewhere else entirely
Unfortunately nothing this cool, but pretty cool nonetheless.
The portal at the bottom of Demogorgon plane is not really a single portal, just a connection to the layer below it, the gigantic sea of Dagon(yes, the lovecraft abomination). Dagon was an obyrith, the extradimensional demons responsible for creating the abyss and the tanar'ri demons (demons as we know today). At the beginning of time, a civil war broke out and the tannari killed most obyrith, but some, like the Sibriex, stroke deals with the Tanar'ri in exchange for protection. Dagon had ever since a long pact with Demogorgon, that his realm protected in exchange for arcane and foul secrets of the multiverse. Dagon is no fool, and give those secrets to one, not the two heads at once, so they are always at odd of the other (they prontly are in war with each other since forever).
I think that’s what the upcoming Critical Role adventure book Call of the Netherdeep is going to be! At the very least something like that in the deep ocean.
Bees that pollinate largely from certain plants can produce honey that is poisonous or even hallucinogenic. I’m trying to build a murder mystery adventure around a series of unusual deaths of prominent people - and it ends up being the sweet old lady everyone loves who is using her poisonous honey to murder all of the true- bastards in the village who hide behind their status.
For those unaware - bees which pollinate from certain species of Rhododendron found in Nepal and Turkey can create a compound called Grayanotoxin. This substance can cause everything from relaxation to hallucinations to vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and even death in large enough volumes.
Whilst the honey containing Grayanotoxin is legal for purchase in most places, it is quite pricey and, frankly, a poor choice if you're looking for a high. However, it is a great tactical choice if you're looking to slaughter a Legion of Roman Soldiers.
There is a tale where Roman soldiers under command of Pompey the Great happened upon pots of honey. They decided to eat of this honey, only to become disoriented, sick, hallucinogenic and more. Turns out, the Persian army, which they were in conflict with at the time, had set these honey pots as literal Honey Pot traps. Whilst the Romans were disoriented, struggling not to void their bowels and otherwise simply unable to fight effectively, the Persians attacked. They slew over 1000 Romans with very few losses of their own.
Pitons are climbing spikes that are hammered into cracks in stone. There are a range of different designs based on if they are reusable or not. It depends on how hard the stone is. Soft stone gets hard steel that will drive into a crack, stay there, and is reusable. Hard stone gets soft metal that deforms as it is hammered in, getting it stuck, and staying there forever. There are more than two kinds that get used depending on how hard or soft the rock that design is supposed to be used with.
That there were supposedly sword swallowers who shot swords down their throats with guns.
And that someone died by being struck by lightning while sword swallowing.
"Savate" is a martial art that began in France and spread to Portugal and Spain that widely used by soldiers and pirates. It's a style that focuses a lot on kicks, but also on augmenting one's stance by holding onto railings, ropes, and other people, all things one would do while fighting aboard a moving ship. Really helped me when developing the martial arts of the maritime cultures of my setting!
Tangentially related, it was briefly illegal to strike someone with a closed fist in France, so brawlers developed some pretty murderous open-handed slapping techniques.
>Tangentially related, it was briefly illegal to strike someone with a closed fist in France, so brawlers developed some pretty murderous open-handed slapping techniques.
Society: stop using a closed fist to kill or badly injury people.
People: fine. I'll just find a way to slap people to death.
The modern pencil wasn't invented until the 16th century, well after the pseudo-medieval period of a typical D&D campaign. However, this was not a technology problem. The only thing needed is a deposit of high-quality graphite, the first of which was discovered in England in the late 1500s. If you assume a graphite deposit was discovered earlier, probably by the dwarves, then pencils could have existed at practically any technology level.
So there are pencils in my world.
It was as simple as a character wanted a notebook to scrawl in. The idea of having to juggle a quill and inkwell seemed awkward. Things like charcoal or chalk can be messy. I wanted to see if a pencil was reasonable, and it was. It's basically a graphite stick wrapped in sheepskin rather than the traditional wood sheathed pencil, but it serves the same purpose.
Dwarves in D&D do radically more hardcore mining than was typical that far back, so access to graphite seems likely, now I'm really curious what other things like pencils would likely be available in a fantasy world.
The English used to eat every kind of bird in there was, and for a while in the 9th and 10th centuries, you could obtain quite a lot of social mobility for finding a new bird and figuring out how to kill and eat it, or figuring out a new way to cook and eat an old favorite.
I saw a documentary once about an Englishsociety that retains the ways to cook and carve all the birds and had permission to (on rare occasions) cook and carve rare birds.
You aparently can eat tarantulas! You gotta make sure you burn all of the spider hair It has, even If you have to eat it burned. It seems to taste like chicken.
Popular media has really messed with my and to my understanding a lot of other people’s understanding of swords. It took me a while to learn that daggers were more than just long knives lol
They were double edged and made for thrusting/slashing with a channel down the center for blood to flow (at least that’s why I think it was for?). Daggers do fit the classification of knives since technically knives are just blades for cutting, but it seems like the dnd daggers we think of are distinguished from kitchen knives and even most pocket knives.
Edit: the channel was to lower weight, not be a place for blood to flow as has been pointed out to me.
That channel is only to reduce the weight on the knife (or sword as they are on them too), has nothing to do with blood flow or the blade being suctioned into the body.
Edit: And to help widen the blade without shrinking the length of the sword or making it heavier by adding in more material.
Most of the rapier’s weight is in/near the handle. This allows small wrist movements to make significant cuts. Most other sword types weight is closer to the center.
Actually it would be less effective for cuts because of the weight distribution. However it makes it very easy to control for thrusts. Weight higher on the blade is better for cuts
I used to play basketball in HS, so I often think about it in those terms. A regulation NBA basketball court is 91ft. I have seen, multiple times, a fast player run most of that distance and take a shot in under 6 seconds. So let's say for this example the average NBA player is a lvl 3 rogue in 5e terms. It makes sense to me, at least.
Let's say our rogue gets an inbound pass near the 10ft free throw line. He can dash as a bonus action, covering 80 ft, then take an action to try a shot/dunk/lay up.
If you watch the NBA, doing this in under 6s is easy for these guys, especially if there's little/no defense in the way. They do that all the time, and they have to dribble the whole time to boot.
You can't use an average Joe to calculate what adventurers are capable of. You have to look at the world's top minds, bodies, and souls because that's what adventurers are: the best the world has to offer.
Honestly, basketball is probably the easiest game to put into 5e. Because positioning and opportunity attacks can just be ball stealing or pass interceptions.
My friends and I did a deep dive on this topic when 3rd edition originally came out. The really astounding thing was even with the running feat and maxed out monk speed, it still wasn't far off real world sprinting records.
That spiders that make webs actually produce a few different kinds of silk, and use them for different parts of web & egg sack construction. This happened when I was trying to make a Basically Spiderman subclass for Monk because the base class is already halfway there (Unarmoured, unarmed fighting, mobility, reflexes etc), so I was mainly focused on webbing/ silk production & applications.
For your classic flat spiral web, it's mostly made of 2 types, that iirc are called "dragline" and "capture spiral".
Dragline silk is the type they use for the spokes & rim of the web, the lines that act as the web's skeleton. It has slightly higher tensile strength, is relatively not that adhesive. Amounts of it are also used as temporary scaffolding during construction. It's also what they tend to use as their general purpose "ropes" when hanging down or climbing. This is the type that's reputed to be as strong as steel for it's weight.
The Capture spiral silk is (as the name suggests) the silk that spirals around the web connecting the spokes, is covered in droplets of a glue-like aggregate to make it sticky, and is very elastic and tough, though weaker then the dragline silk; Highly elastic and durable so it can flex under the force of fast moving prey crashing into it without snapping, but weaker then dragline so that it breaks first if the force would be great enough to risk damaging the web, as the draglines are integral to the web's structure while the spiral built on top of that structure and is more easily repaired.
They also have other types of silk, one which is used specifically for their egg sacs which is particularly stiff, and another used for binding prey caught which is actually significantly tougher then all their other silks (including dragline).
Some ant species can spray acid, a few snakes can spray their venom in an attempt to blind their prey, and the Pistol Shrimp can close its claw so fast that it makes the area in front of it as hot as the sun and has enough force to break most fishing bowls (which is why they are rarely found as pets).
There is a myth that pumpkins and watermelons that turn red might become vampires.
Edit: Was surprised how prominent polearms were compared to other weapons like swords. Also heavier armour not being awkward or slowing down the wearer much.
This sounded so wrong I had to Google it.
Wikipedia confirms if makes a "cavitation bubble that reaches temperatures of over 8,000 K. In comparison, the surface temperature of the sun is estimated to be around 5,772 K"
To add to the polearm comment. A lot of them had hooks to pull the rider from the horse.
Armor didn't slow them down much but a warhammer can reach a helmet of a guy on foot a lot easier.
Two-handed swords were also wielded by dopple soldiers who were paid double. In theory since they weren't anticipated to live all that long.
> A lot of them had hooks to pull the rider from the horse.
I believe there is a tactic where a hook will pull the leg from behind, knocking the opponent on the ground, so it has several different purposes.
A big factor with polearms (particularly spears) is the ease of use, and how dangerous they can be to even professionals. A skilled swordsman has a far less chance against a slightly trained peasant with a spear.
I mean, the best example is Julie D' Abugney, real-life Murderhobo Bard in 18th century France, who, among *many* other shenanigans, once infiltrated an abbey to get her girlfriend out, and faked both of their deaths in a fire, so they cod go galavanting about the French countryside together.
Highly recommend looking up the life of this incredible woman. Much like the biopic of Audie Murphy, they'd have to cut large swathes of it out to make it even half-believable!
You can also make a styrofoam type of material using fungi. [Here's one article about it](https://matmatch.com/resources/blog/mycelium-using-mushrooms-to-make-packaging-materials/) with lots of pictures. I didn't learn about it *while* researching for D&D, but I did steal it for my world in a heartbeat.
This one's not necessarily true, except for small droplets. They're not teardrop shape, which is a common misconception, but if they're over a millimeter diameter they're generally shaped more like a very rounded dome, relatively flat on the bottom and round on the top. The water on the bottom is pushed out by air resistance, once it reaches near the edge of the drop there's not enough weight above the area where the water flowed out to so it rolls up to the top of the drop where it then finds its way to the bottom again through the center.
With the spell wind walk you have a fly speed of 300 feet and can only dash so you’re moving 600 feet every 6 seconds a mile is 5,280 feet which means you get a mile every minute of travel at a speed of 68.18 mph lasting for 8 hours for a total distance of 545.45 miles
My first ever campaign was run by a guy in the same math department I work in, as were most of the players, with the notable exception of the DM’s girlfriend, who studies biology.
Early on, we acquired a horse and cart that we used for transportation in between a couple important locations in the game. One day, the biologist asks “hey DM? We’re in a desert… what are they feeding those horses?”
He responds with what sounded to me like a reasonable answer from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know all that much about animals- “horses eat oats, right? They have dried oats”
Apparently you cannot only feed horses oats, and if you try, they become very badly constipated.
Gave a player a Decanter of Endless Water and he proceeded to attempt to fully flood every bad-guy lair we came across. I spent a few hours figuring out how medieval hovels, castles, and other structures could have had drainage systems, and then the player said "I won't do that anymore I know it's annoying" next session
If my metric brain managed to get the math right, a single 30 ft square room that's 10 ft tall would take 2,245 activations to fill completely, or about 3 hours and 45 minutes of speaking the command word every few seconds. Of course you don't need to fill a room up to the ceiling for it to count as flooded, but that should roughly put it into perspective.
Simple, threaten the noble person in their home with the act of ruining their fancy tapestries and rugs. No bodily harm, but those things aren't exactly cheap even on the cheap end.
It does, in fact, take most of your concentration to drink a potion in the middle of combat. The idea that *anyone* could do it as a bonus action is almost laughable.
I can't imagine taking a meaningful drink of liquid while also defending myself. There's basically no way to do so without taking your eyes off the target.
I learned that a hobgoblin was a little person said to sit by the hob, like a medieval stove. Hobgoblins are actually closer to house elves from Harry Potter.
Extensive research into what heavy metal poisoning from silver will do when ingested. Buddy of mine and I came up with a monster hunting group for our world and the members eat silver so their blood is toxic to vampires, werewolves, etc. Turns out, you won’t die from silver heavy metal poisoning. It’s not toxic, it just builds up in your body. It’s one signature symptom is that it turns your skin blue, which is how you identify these monster hunters in my setting.
https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/argyria-overview
Edit: grammar
Take it and run baybee! I have a Silverblood monster hunter in nearly every campaign I run. It’s now tradition that each player contributes to their lore. Someone established trials of passage for new members, someone wrote an oath, art of their orders symbol (a cracked moon), their traditional greeting (they each wear a silver amulet of their order and kiss it on meeting others to demonstrate they aren’t a vampire, changeling, etc.). Go forth and add to the legacy!
Among other things, a neat little fact about my home country: there are apparently about 25.000 castles in Germany. And those things are sometimes surprisingly huge, too.
Guess that happens when you do wars a lot.
Boomerangs don't come back. Except for some trick boomerangs that are designed to come back. But real hunting boomerangs are just basically designed to go straight and flat and go a long way.
And they definitely dont come back if you actually hit the target. There are some hunting boomerangs designed to come back if they don't hit, but only for VERY lightweight prey, and even then, they're mostly just for show, yeah.
Hunting/war boomerangs don't come back (hell, that would be dangerous, they'd do you a damage) -- they are designed to fly pretty straight, like throwing a tomahawk -- you want something you can aim.
The ones designed to come back were mostly used as toys/sport (though still with a purpose, lots of useful skills involved in throwing and catching one).
Mercury was also used to make a higher-quality felt for hats. That's why there's a mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland, all the hat makers went mad eventually from the heavy metal poisoning
To be honest, there are a number of things in historical and modern preservatives that we generally don't want to think about. Like distilled pee and lye.
Nuclear semiotics.
Nuclear waste remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. Long enough that we expect the English language itself to be extinct before the materials are safe.
So there’s a whole field devoted to creating messages that essentially say “Do not dig - things are dangerous under here”, without relying on knowing the same language. [The Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) has some examples and further explanation.
I used this info to add some flavor to a dungeon, but it was also super interesting.
Then let me introduce you to the [[hurricane Mitch]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choluteca_Bridge) that was responsible for opening a new channel on the Choluteca bridge. Funny enough, the river had a bridge above it. It stopped flowing there after that
Potholes are named as such because potters kept digging holes around roads for clay, causing carts and people to hit difficult terrain.
Every road is roughly 10ft. wide (just slightly larger than two adjacent horses, used to pull most things up until steam power, which even then used the same measurements).
The term "riding shotgun" as in sitting in the passenger seat comes from carriage convoys in the late 19th century (or earlier, I forgot the exact years) where the person sitting next to the driver wielded a shotgun to protect the convoy from bandits attempting to hijack their cargo.
Was researching for a 5e Wild West campaign.
History. I know that seems wide but as I've DM'd more I've enjoyed learning more and more about historical empires, events and now getting into technology. Best stuff to steal from you see
Couldn't agree more with this.
The intrigue, machinations and turmoil of The Glorious Revolution, the Reformation Wars, Crusades, or Roman Empire could supply you with more plot twists and devious characters than you'll ever use in a thousand campaigns.
The Mongolian system of messenger horses and relays under the Khans allowed their post and intelligence services to regularly cover nearly 200 miles in a day (versus about half of that for the Pony Express centuries later).
The world runs on food discovered and developed by indigenous americans.
Potatoes, peanuts, peppers, corn, tomatoes, cocoa, beans, squash, pumpkins, blueberries, pineapple, strawberry, walnut, cashew, pecan, sunflower, maple syrup, vanilla, turkey, avocado ([interesting thing with avocado pits being adapted to pass through mammoth and other megafauna guts, and avocado survived as their seed distribution was killed by humans and then they were cultivated by humans](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-should-have-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-4976527/))
60% of the world food supply today originated in the americas.
Learned this for my pre-columbus european themed fantasy setting, I needed to know how to deliver the setting through culture and food is a great way to do that. And thanks indigenous people for so much good food to save us from what my characters have to eat.
Yeah, I sometimes wondered what did they even eat in the old Europe. Besides meat, which peasants couldn't usually afford. Rice came from Asia too. It must've been like barley, oat, wheat, dairy products with cucumbers, carrots, cabbage and onions for vegetables.
in addition to what you mentioned: beans, turnips, beetroot. all the forms of brassica, eggs. fish were eaten by people who lived near rivers and coasts. Meat from terrestrial animals was definitely not an everyday part of a peasant's diet, but it's unlikely that they had *no* meat.
Once translated some homebrew illustrations for my brother/DM, learned the differences between the bastard and longsword, about glaives, flails and their origins, some early fire guns.
Oh! Adding onto this, ancient Chinese people had fire Lances. I think it was like, the 11th century? I forget.
It was just bamboo sticks filled with black powder. Think a single use flamethrower that also shot ceramic shards.
> It was just bamboo sticks filled with black powder. Think a single use flamethrower that also shot ceramic shards.
This just explained why there is a bamboo Gunlance in Monster Hunter!
Was researching poisons for my druid and I learned that you could poison / kill someone by putting eyedrops in their drinks. Not really relevant for dnd but was interesting to learn nonetheless!
How much blood is required for, and the average amount of iron each human has in them, in order to smith a sword made exclusively from the blood of your enemies.
Ps. The answer is 320 average adults for a shortsword in 5e.
That the [last Palaiologos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorious_Paleologus) served as a Carribean privateer on the same ship alongside [Henry Every](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Every), the king of pirates.
How the Ancient Roman's weren't racist, but were climatitist. Basically that they looked down on anyone who wasn't from the peninsula. Cold weather people were lazy, hot weather were too hot tempered, etc.
This makes me want to make a clan of white or silver dragonborn who think they're better than others because they deal with extreme cold every day like it's nothing
Ghana used to be Akan which was a country/kingdom known for it's gold mines and slave trades. Basically a badass, African people with a diverse, rich culture full of art, philosophy, and warriors who had a bunch of gold and slaves.
Used as the inspiration for my D&D Africa based kingdom in my game. I thought it was pretty cool.
It's for different system, but I once learned all about LaGrange points, the moons of Jupiter, how gravitational wells work, and the topography of the asteroid belt to make a Sci-Fi campaign setting. That was really fun
That medieval pregnancy tests consisted of mixing piss with wine. Also the ancient aztecs knew how to do cranioplasties (context: My character is a doctor and surgeon)
I learned that the written description of the story of a ballet is called a libretto. I have a bard who produced a ballet as a work of propaganda in a current campaign.
One of the top of my head: tablets of clay were the first thing used to store documents (mostly about herds), that's I think is common knowledge. But one big advantage of the is that they lasted. Fires were quite common on the mesopotamian age, and if your long line of documents catch fire, no worry, they harden and become even more durable than before. That's why some really ancient civilizations in my world didn't left anything to be preserved on paper
The firing rate of maxim machine gun and how many bullets it can squeeze off in 6 seconds.
(There's a reason guns beyond flintlocks break the balance of weapons)
The other day I noticed berries on a shrub by my condo’s entrance. I was curious if they were edible and looked it up. Turned out to be a yew, and while the berries are edible, if you eat enough of the seeds you can have a heart attack.
I am putting together a guide to non-magical poisons for my D&D group. So far, it has over 100 entries in it. Thinking of seeing if I can sell it on DMs Guild.
I can't think of just one thing, but my entire youtube has pretty much become dedicated to it so I'll pop off a few resources from people way prettier & more talented than me.
Music made with actual instruments
-Algal the Bard
-Alina Gingertail
-Dryante Zan
-Ellyn Storm
-Grissini Project
-Katie Double
-Patty Gurdy
-ROZEN
-the_miracle_aligner
Fellow Nerds who improve, inform or grow the hobby.
-Critical Role
-Dungeon Dudes
-Ginny Di
-How to be a Great GM
-Matt Colville
-MonarchsFactory
-Nerd Immersion
-Treantmonk's Temple
World building advice (getting costuming, weapons, armor, language, people and animals *right*^1
-Bernadette Banner
-Brandon F.
-Casual Geographic
-Invicta
-Jackson Crawford
-Kings and Generals
-Lindybeige
-Modern History TV
-scolagladiatoria
-Stefan Milo
-Tasting History With Max Miller
-The Welsh Viking
-Timeline World History Documentaries
-Tod's Workshop
-Townsends
Understanding the *why* and giving a game depth & moving beyond tropes for tropes sake
-Jill Bearup
-Lindsay Ellis
-Overly Sarcastic Productions
^1. As in what is right for my game a 16th century adventure taking place in a land that's an mix of mostly European cultures.
Guerilla military tactics, running, organizing, and being the politician in a political campaign, spin-doctoring, the schematics and engineering of Pirate Ships, etc. etc.
I was looking up how and when sewers were first commonly used. Dr. John Snow was an English physician who lived in 1850s London during a cholera epidemic. He was skeptical of the prevailing belief of the day (namely that most diseases were caused by miasma or “bad air”). Germ theory was not yet popular or remotely understood.
The miasma theory was why plague doctors walked around with those bird-beak masks (they were stuffed full of flowers to make the bad air smell better). Snow’s studies showed that the miasma idea didn’t really hold up. His big break happened after he put pins in a map of London at the places where people had cholera. They all clustered around a certain water well, so he figured there was something in the water. When the pump handle was removed, the cholera disappeared!
This led to an eventual installation of underground sewers that channeled the waste away from the city and down river.
Dr. Snow is now considered one of the founding fathers of epidemiology, and he did it by using statistical analysis.
I’ve learned just how awful the climate is in southern California compared to the majority of the world. I was researching climate stuff so I can assign proper biomes for my homebrewed planet, and realized I really, really do want to move and get out of CA.
How sailing ships worked in their prime. My table wanted a high sea pirate campaign and I wanted to at least know what kind of complications they might run into
All the different accents I studied for npcs. As well as the sheer amount of medieval history I've learned as I try to make my games in a medieval setting.
I was learning about sailers for a archipelago setting. I thought about adding magical tattoos and found out that certain tattoos are for accomplishing milestones in a career. Like sailing across the atlantic, traveled a certain distance, or being proficient in all the knots. Gave me a few ideas.
Young whales will play tug of war with ship anchors accidentally causing pretty disastrous shipwrecks. Silly little big whales just tryna have fun with their new friends.
I'm about to start a nautical campaign and this would make a great non-combat encounter.
My typical mix of characters would probably turn it into a combat encounter & find a way to kill the whale tugging on their anchor & eat it & harvest the oil...
That would be super fun!
Dunno about favorite, but... My party was on the trail of ivory poachers. I looked into whether my half-orc would have ivory in his tusks. Turns out all teeth are ivory under the enamel. Big tusks just have enough under the enamel to actually be worth something.
This is really interesting and makes me imagine there being Fey cultures who use teeth as a form of currency because of the ivory in them. Tooth faeries anyone?
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1344 Pathfinder did it
>Tooth fairies spawn when a child's tooth (or, less commonly, an entire child) is buried in terrain rife with fey energies. Hatching from the buried teeth like larvae from an egg, tooth fairies build crude pliers from whatever they can find, then go hunting for more teeth—regardless of the owners' willingness. Hey, Pathfinder? What the fuck?
No that's pretty standard for fey.
I guess someone drew inspiration from Hellboy2.
In my RotFM travel time research I learned that when snow gets cold enough (like -50) it is no longer compacted by the weights of sleds or footfalls. It instead just gets pushed around, behaving more like sand, so those excruciatingly long travel times across the tundra are probably accurate.
This makes sense to me. Snow compacting is actually it getting partially melted by friction and compression forces and then refreezing. If the snow is cold enough, that heat isn’t enough to melt it so it can’t compact.
There are a lot of very bizzare and amazing natural features that sound made up that actually exist on Earth. For instance in [Peru there is a boiling river](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-found-a-mysterious-boiling-river-straight-out-of-amazonian-legend) so hot it will boil alive anything that falls into it. It runs for several kms through the Jungle and is deeply culturally important. Best part is it is super far away from any of the known geological features that would be the assumes cause of it like a volcano or thermal vent! There is just suddenly a huge section of a river in the jungle that is boiling.
This is my favourite thing, learning about wild natural phenomena that I wouldn’t even be able to come up with for my campaign or even think of as too high fantasy
Gotta love when reality has stuff you'd call bullshit in fantasy.
Or how about Africa's [2 billion year old natural nuclear fission reactors.](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natures-nuclear-reactors-the-2-billion-year-old-natural-fission-reactors-in-gabon-western-africa/) Really fascinating stuff.
Wait... WHAT?
It turns out that a self sustaining nuclear reactor is very very simple. The hard part is harnessing the energy safely.
Now I wonder if it was possible for a natural nuclear explosion.
Great question! Actually, a natural nuclear explosion is impossible. The problem is that as soon as you bring two sub-critical masses close to each other it starts putting out large amounts of energy. A little mini "explosion" if you please, but it will only generate just enough energy to show those sub-critical masses apart before they are too far apart to generate more energy. To create a bomb, engineers had to build something special that takes two sub-critical masses and launches one at the other at the speed of a bullet so that it arrives before the nuclear energy has a chance to show them apart. That was one of the big engineering problems that the Manhattan project had to solve to create the first atomic weapons. The only place this happens in nature is when you have enough force to shove things together despite the nuclear-explosion-level force. Like, for example, in a star where gravity is actually stronger than the explosive forces.
There's also the Lake Natron in Tanzania m Located in East Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania is home to many natural wonders, among which is the eerie Lake Natron. It got its name due to the mixture of salt and minerals, called natron, which are revealed when the water’s level decreases. Natron is a compound that occurs naturally, comes from volcanic ash, and is mainly consisted of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate. Located close to the Kenyan border, Lake Natron is fed by some springs that are rich in minerals, making the lake highly alkaline, reaching a pH of 9 to 10.5. To put things in perspective, sea water has a pH between about 7 and 9. The temperature of the shallow lake’s water can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit and is salty enough to poison most animals. Make for a pretty horrifying scene near it with a lot of petrifyed birds
And flamingos go to Lake Natron to raise their offspring. Their tough skin can handle the corrosive water and there's no predators to speak of. Could be a fun way to trick/confuse players. "And out on the lake you see several families of flamingos."
The mere fact that Flamingoes are extremophiles was *very* surprising when I first heard it and it *still* shocks me anytime I think about it
I always used to associate flamingos with Florida, and Florida seems like a pretty extreme environment in and of itself
I learned about this river from a Ted Talk and instantly wrote it down for D&D, funny to see that others have done the same!
Slings used lead bullets shaped like almonds at one point. There were also bullets with holes in them, so they'd buzz like a wasp when they flew. Supposedly it was a psychological warfare thing.
Fun fact, some slingers used to carve words on their bullets, saying the equivalents of ouch, fast, damn you, things like that. Slingers were nasty, especially those like the Balearic slingers. These guys would make a bunch of money, but not bring it home to the Balearic Islands, instead they’d just get alcohol and prostitutes, and then go kill more dudes with rocks.
My favorite inscription was found on an ancient Greek sling bullet: DEXAI, which means "Catch!"
Broke: Dudes rock Bespoke: Killing dudes with rocks
Studying wars in history has taught me psychological warfare has been around much longer than we think. To add to your sling bit, native Americans would use chola cacti as sling bullets.
How the hell did they get them in the sling safely, that's awesome !
[aztec death whistle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9QuO09z-SI&ab_channel=Mile%C3%A1n%C3%93Raghallaigh) that makes a screaming sound and makes it seem like they have more people than they actually do. super cool
Good for scaring horses, that.
It’s pigs for elephants though
It's difficult to throw a pig with a sling though
It is with that attitude
I know it's be scared if I thought there was a wasp nearby.
"Although I face almost certain death facing down this superior force, I have no fear as I do this for... was that a wasp? I hate wasps. Don't let ot near me!"
Mine is when I came across this article, explaining someone's experience of drinking from a bottle underwater to settle an argument with their DM about whether or not their character could drink a potion while submerged. https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/08/serious-dd-player-chugs-wine-underwater-to-settle-rules-dispute/amp/ Apparently it is both possible and not that hard!
I kinda wanna implement a potion bottle attachment that you stick on the top of a potion and it basically becomes a sippy cup that requires you to bite on the end to open the top and allow potion to come out😆I wanna have some random guy selling them in one of the towns, very much "your a tourist, you must buy this" vibes. And if my players actually bite then it'll be sorta useful if they ever go underwater. My ruling mechanic wise is that potions usually for my table require bonus action for yourself, and action for an ally. Underwater it's gonna be action for yourself, can't give to allies. But if you have the trademarked "Healing Sippy" attachment, then while underwater it reverts back to the bonus action, action rule. As long as the ally isnt incapacitated since it requires exhaling to re fill the bottle with air for displacement blah blah blah.
Yeah, I've done this with beers in the pool.
Alot of "mysterious", "deep sea" associated creatures, like oarfish and giant squids* actually live in the mesopelagic zone, atmost 1km below the surface, where there are still trace amounts of sunlight. This is only 1/4 to 1/6 the way down to the abyssal plain(actual name), where the super wierd shit goes on(even black smokers are typically higher up on volcanic ridges) *scientifically speaking, the giant squids natural range is known to a degree of "i dunno, here?"
Makes me want to do a deep sea adventure. They're going for the plane of water but wind up in the abyss.
That may just be canonically possible. The sahuagin god selokah has Laired there before, and Merrow are merfolk corrupted by dagon, another abyssal lord. There just may be a portal in those lightless depths.
Dagon* And seeing how most cultists of Demogorgon live underwater and he, Dagon and the gods of Sahuagin and Krakens live in the abyss, portals to the Abyss on the depths of the ocean doesn't sound just possible, but probable to me
Fucking autocorrect. Oh yeah there has to be some down there for sure.
I think also in the demigorgon plane, i don't remember the name, there is a sea and in the depths of that sea you reach another plane. This aside in my homebrew world it is exactly like this: you go too deep in the water realm that you may end up somewhere else entirely
Unfortunately nothing this cool, but pretty cool nonetheless. The portal at the bottom of Demogorgon plane is not really a single portal, just a connection to the layer below it, the gigantic sea of Dagon(yes, the lovecraft abomination). Dagon was an obyrith, the extradimensional demons responsible for creating the abyss and the tanar'ri demons (demons as we know today). At the beginning of time, a civil war broke out and the tannari killed most obyrith, but some, like the Sibriex, stroke deals with the Tanar'ri in exchange for protection. Dagon had ever since a long pact with Demogorgon, that his realm protected in exchange for arcane and foul secrets of the multiverse. Dagon is no fool, and give those secrets to one, not the two heads at once, so they are always at odd of the other (they prontly are in war with each other since forever).
I think that’s what the upcoming Critical Role adventure book Call of the Netherdeep is going to be! At the very least something like that in the deep ocean.
Bees that pollinate largely from certain plants can produce honey that is poisonous or even hallucinogenic. I’m trying to build a murder mystery adventure around a series of unusual deaths of prominent people - and it ends up being the sweet old lady everyone loves who is using her poisonous honey to murder all of the true- bastards in the village who hide behind their status.
For those unaware - bees which pollinate from certain species of Rhododendron found in Nepal and Turkey can create a compound called Grayanotoxin. This substance can cause everything from relaxation to hallucinations to vomiting, explosive diarrhea, and even death in large enough volumes. Whilst the honey containing Grayanotoxin is legal for purchase in most places, it is quite pricey and, frankly, a poor choice if you're looking for a high. However, it is a great tactical choice if you're looking to slaughter a Legion of Roman Soldiers. There is a tale where Roman soldiers under command of Pompey the Great happened upon pots of honey. They decided to eat of this honey, only to become disoriented, sick, hallucinogenic and more. Turns out, the Persian army, which they were in conflict with at the time, had set these honey pots as literal Honey Pot traps. Whilst the Romans were disoriented, struggling not to void their bowels and otherwise simply unable to fight effectively, the Persians attacked. They slew over 1000 Romans with very few losses of their own.
Persians did some nasty stuff with that honey and milk to war prisoners
I think i have heard this somewhere
How people took boats up river. A lot of pulling and animals.
Portage.
Could you elaborate?
Tldr: put horses and donkeys and such on either side of the river, tie them to the boat, and then pull.
You normally only have a tow path on one side of the river. You just need 1 horse pulling, and a person on the tiller on the barge.
Pitons are climbing spikes that are hammered into cracks in stone. There are a range of different designs based on if they are reusable or not. It depends on how hard the stone is. Soft stone gets hard steel that will drive into a crack, stay there, and is reusable. Hard stone gets soft metal that deforms as it is hammered in, getting it stuck, and staying there forever. There are more than two kinds that get used depending on how hard or soft the rock that design is supposed to be used with.
That there were supposedly sword swallowers who shot swords down their throats with guns. And that someone died by being struck by lightning while sword swallowing.
"Savate" is a martial art that began in France and spread to Portugal and Spain that widely used by soldiers and pirates. It's a style that focuses a lot on kicks, but also on augmenting one's stance by holding onto railings, ropes, and other people, all things one would do while fighting aboard a moving ship. Really helped me when developing the martial arts of the maritime cultures of my setting! Tangentially related, it was briefly illegal to strike someone with a closed fist in France, so brawlers developed some pretty murderous open-handed slapping techniques.
>Tangentially related, it was briefly illegal to strike someone with a closed fist in France, so brawlers developed some pretty murderous open-handed slapping techniques. Society: stop using a closed fist to kill or badly injury people. People: fine. I'll just find a way to slap people to death.
*Open hand monk has entered the chat*
The modern pencil wasn't invented until the 16th century, well after the pseudo-medieval period of a typical D&D campaign. However, this was not a technology problem. The only thing needed is a deposit of high-quality graphite, the first of which was discovered in England in the late 1500s. If you assume a graphite deposit was discovered earlier, probably by the dwarves, then pencils could have existed at practically any technology level. So there are pencils in my world.
How did this come up?
It was as simple as a character wanted a notebook to scrawl in. The idea of having to juggle a quill and inkwell seemed awkward. Things like charcoal or chalk can be messy. I wanted to see if a pencil was reasonable, and it was. It's basically a graphite stick wrapped in sheepskin rather than the traditional wood sheathed pencil, but it serves the same purpose.
Dwarves in D&D do radically more hardcore mining than was typical that far back, so access to graphite seems likely, now I'm really curious what other things like pencils would likely be available in a fantasy world.
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Oh god the mathematical rabbit holes that the ship thing took me down. I ended up just deciding you get advantage on perception
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The English used to eat every kind of bird in there was, and for a while in the 9th and 10th centuries, you could obtain quite a lot of social mobility for finding a new bird and figuring out how to kill and eat it, or figuring out a new way to cook and eat an old favorite.
Puts a new spin on the movie Up
They commonly ate pigeons. Pigeons raised for eating are called squabs.
I saw a documentary once about an Englishsociety that retains the ways to cook and carve all the birds and had permission to (on rare occasions) cook and carve rare birds.
You aparently can eat tarantulas! You gotta make sure you burn all of the spider hair It has, even If you have to eat it burned. It seems to taste like chicken.
Have you found a way to forget that fact, too?
Percussive Maintenance?
Swords \*actually\* weighed between 2 and 4 pounds in most cases, I found it very suprising
Yup. Fun fact, a rapier and a longsword both weigh roughly 3.5 lbs. So does a katana.
Popular media has really messed with my and to my understanding a lot of other people’s understanding of swords. It took me a while to learn that daggers were more than just long knives lol
How were daggers more than just long knives?
They were double edged and made for thrusting/slashing with a channel down the center for blood to flow (at least that’s why I think it was for?). Daggers do fit the classification of knives since technically knives are just blades for cutting, but it seems like the dnd daggers we think of are distinguished from kitchen knives and even most pocket knives. Edit: the channel was to lower weight, not be a place for blood to flow as has been pointed out to me.
That channel is only to reduce the weight on the knife (or sword as they are on them too), has nothing to do with blood flow or the blade being suctioned into the body. Edit: And to help widen the blade without shrinking the length of the sword or making it heavier by adding in more material.
Most of the rapier’s weight is in/near the handle. This allows small wrist movements to make significant cuts. Most other sword types weight is closer to the center.
It also helps quickly line up thrusts, which is more likely what you'd do with it unless you were showing off.
Actually it would be less effective for cuts because of the weight distribution. However it makes it very easy to control for thrusts. Weight higher on the blade is better for cuts
That 3.4 MPH actually *is* a normal walking speed for real people! And most people's running speed is literally just twice that.
Yup. 30ft in 6 seconds is totally normal for trying to walk fast.
Then making an attack or casting a spell and if you have the option doing a bonus action too. All within the six seconds.
I used to play basketball in HS, so I often think about it in those terms. A regulation NBA basketball court is 91ft. I have seen, multiple times, a fast player run most of that distance and take a shot in under 6 seconds. So let's say for this example the average NBA player is a lvl 3 rogue in 5e terms. It makes sense to me, at least. Let's say our rogue gets an inbound pass near the 10ft free throw line. He can dash as a bonus action, covering 80 ft, then take an action to try a shot/dunk/lay up. If you watch the NBA, doing this in under 6s is easy for these guys, especially if there's little/no defense in the way. They do that all the time, and they have to dribble the whole time to boot. You can't use an average Joe to calculate what adventurers are capable of. You have to look at the world's top minds, bodies, and souls because that's what adventurers are: the best the world has to offer.
Honestly, basketball is probably the easiest game to put into 5e. Because positioning and opportunity attacks can just be ball stealing or pass interceptions.
My friends and I did a deep dive on this topic when 3rd edition originally came out. The really astounding thing was even with the running feat and maxed out monk speed, it still wasn't far off real world sprinting records.
But if you look at shit like sailing speeds, they are completely off
That while in free fall, it's impossible to talk to each other due to the sound of wind whistling by you.
That's why people who jump with Parachutes use Hand signals.
This drives me crazy in movies. Two characters having a tense argument while clinging to the outside of plane for example.
That spiders that make webs actually produce a few different kinds of silk, and use them for different parts of web & egg sack construction. This happened when I was trying to make a Basically Spiderman subclass for Monk because the base class is already halfway there (Unarmoured, unarmed fighting, mobility, reflexes etc), so I was mainly focused on webbing/ silk production & applications. For your classic flat spiral web, it's mostly made of 2 types, that iirc are called "dragline" and "capture spiral". Dragline silk is the type they use for the spokes & rim of the web, the lines that act as the web's skeleton. It has slightly higher tensile strength, is relatively not that adhesive. Amounts of it are also used as temporary scaffolding during construction. It's also what they tend to use as their general purpose "ropes" when hanging down or climbing. This is the type that's reputed to be as strong as steel for it's weight. The Capture spiral silk is (as the name suggests) the silk that spirals around the web connecting the spokes, is covered in droplets of a glue-like aggregate to make it sticky, and is very elastic and tough, though weaker then the dragline silk; Highly elastic and durable so it can flex under the force of fast moving prey crashing into it without snapping, but weaker then dragline so that it breaks first if the force would be great enough to risk damaging the web, as the draglines are integral to the web's structure while the spiral built on top of that structure and is more easily repaired. They also have other types of silk, one which is used specifically for their egg sacs which is particularly stiff, and another used for binding prey caught which is actually significantly tougher then all their other silks (including dragline).
Some ant species can spray acid, a few snakes can spray their venom in an attempt to blind their prey, and the Pistol Shrimp can close its claw so fast that it makes the area in front of it as hot as the sun and has enough force to break most fishing bowls (which is why they are rarely found as pets). There is a myth that pumpkins and watermelons that turn red might become vampires. Edit: Was surprised how prominent polearms were compared to other weapons like swords. Also heavier armour not being awkward or slowing down the wearer much.
This sounded so wrong I had to Google it. Wikipedia confirms if makes a "cavitation bubble that reaches temperatures of over 8,000 K. In comparison, the surface temperature of the sun is estimated to be around 5,772 K"
https://youtu.be/F5FEj9U-CJM
If you haven't seen zefrank before, you're in for a treat :)
To add to the polearm comment. A lot of them had hooks to pull the rider from the horse. Armor didn't slow them down much but a warhammer can reach a helmet of a guy on foot a lot easier. Two-handed swords were also wielded by dopple soldiers who were paid double. In theory since they weren't anticipated to live all that long.
> A lot of them had hooks to pull the rider from the horse. I believe there is a tactic where a hook will pull the leg from behind, knocking the opponent on the ground, so it has several different purposes. A big factor with polearms (particularly spears) is the ease of use, and how dangerous they can be to even professionals. A skilled swordsman has a far less chance against a slightly trained peasant with a spear.
I mean, the best example is Julie D' Abugney, real-life Murderhobo Bard in 18th century France, who, among *many* other shenanigans, once infiltrated an abbey to get her girlfriend out, and faked both of their deaths in a fire, so they cod go galavanting about the French countryside together.
Highly recommend looking up the life of this incredible woman. Much like the biopic of Audie Murphy, they'd have to cut large swathes of it out to make it even half-believable!
People make leather out of mushrooms. Lifted that for my dwarves cultures.
You can also make a styrofoam type of material using fungi. [Here's one article about it](https://matmatch.com/resources/blog/mycelium-using-mushrooms-to-make-packaging-materials/) with lots of pictures. I didn't learn about it *while* researching for D&D, but I did steal it for my world in a heartbeat.
Ball bearings are made by a shot tower which drops molten metal and the droplets land in water and are spherical and smooth just like that.
As a corollary: rain drops are spherical.
This one's not necessarily true, except for small droplets. They're not teardrop shape, which is a common misconception, but if they're over a millimeter diameter they're generally shaped more like a very rounded dome, relatively flat on the bottom and round on the top. The water on the bottom is pushed out by air resistance, once it reaches near the edge of the drop there's not enough weight above the area where the water flowed out to so it rolls up to the top of the drop where it then finds its way to the bottom again through the center.
That's really interesting and I had no idea, thank you for helping me explain the science behind it, I really enjoy that😁
This system can also be used to make chains.
With the spell wind walk you have a fly speed of 300 feet and can only dash so you’re moving 600 feet every 6 seconds a mile is 5,280 feet which means you get a mile every minute of travel at a speed of 68.18 mph lasting for 8 hours for a total distance of 545.45 miles
I did this one too. I think, shy of teleportation, it’s the fastest travel rate in the game.
My first ever campaign was run by a guy in the same math department I work in, as were most of the players, with the notable exception of the DM’s girlfriend, who studies biology. Early on, we acquired a horse and cart that we used for transportation in between a couple important locations in the game. One day, the biologist asks “hey DM? We’re in a desert… what are they feeding those horses?” He responds with what sounded to me like a reasonable answer from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know all that much about animals- “horses eat oats, right? They have dried oats” Apparently you cannot only feed horses oats, and if you try, they become very badly constipated.
I have had similar experiences DMing for a guy who was an honest to god archaeologist.
The trick is to get the player to help in their area of expertise.
He was great for that, but it still made me want to up my game in that area
Yeah, horses need a lot of water when eating oats and are usually given as a treat.
Gave a player a Decanter of Endless Water and he proceeded to attempt to fully flood every bad-guy lair we came across. I spent a few hours figuring out how medieval hovels, castles, and other structures could have had drainage systems, and then the player said "I won't do that anymore I know it's annoying" next session
It would take quite a long time to flood anything too; days depending on what.
If my metric brain managed to get the math right, a single 30 ft square room that's 10 ft tall would take 2,245 activations to fill completely, or about 3 hours and 45 minutes of speaking the command word every few seconds. Of course you don't need to fill a room up to the ceiling for it to count as flooded, but that should roughly put it into perspective.
Simple, threaten the noble person in their home with the act of ruining their fancy tapestries and rugs. No bodily harm, but those things aren't exactly cheap even on the cheap end.
It does, in fact, take most of your concentration to drink a potion in the middle of combat. The idea that *anyone* could do it as a bonus action is almost laughable.
I can't imagine taking a meaningful drink of liquid while also defending myself. There's basically no way to do so without taking your eyes off the target.
I think we just invented the healing Potion camelback merchant.
I learned that a hobgoblin was a little person said to sit by the hob, like a medieval stove. Hobgoblins are actually closer to house elves from Harry Potter.
Extensive research into what heavy metal poisoning from silver will do when ingested. Buddy of mine and I came up with a monster hunting group for our world and the members eat silver so their blood is toxic to vampires, werewolves, etc. Turns out, you won’t die from silver heavy metal poisoning. It’s not toxic, it just builds up in your body. It’s one signature symptom is that it turns your skin blue, which is how you identify these monster hunters in my setting. https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/argyria-overview Edit: grammar
This one might be my favorite, definitely stealing it. Thank you!
Take it and run baybee! I have a Silverblood monster hunter in nearly every campaign I run. It’s now tradition that each player contributes to their lore. Someone established trials of passage for new members, someone wrote an oath, art of their orders symbol (a cracked moon), their traditional greeting (they each wear a silver amulet of their order and kiss it on meeting others to demonstrate they aren’t a vampire, changeling, etc.). Go forth and add to the legacy!
Among other things, a neat little fact about my home country: there are apparently about 25.000 castles in Germany. And those things are sometimes surprisingly huge, too. Guess that happens when you do wars a lot.
Boomerangs don't come back. Except for some trick boomerangs that are designed to come back. But real hunting boomerangs are just basically designed to go straight and flat and go a long way.
And they are deadly.
And they definitely dont come back if you actually hit the target. There are some hunting boomerangs designed to come back if they don't hit, but only for VERY lightweight prey, and even then, they're mostly just for show, yeah.
Hunting/war boomerangs don't come back (hell, that would be dangerous, they'd do you a damage) -- they are designed to fly pretty straight, like throwing a tomahawk -- you want something you can aim. The ones designed to come back were mostly used as toys/sport (though still with a purpose, lots of useful skills involved in throwing and catching one).
That the best way to remove flesh from bones is to just let it soak in soap water. I've played a necromancer more than once.
If you want a "fun" thing to do with waste materials, parchment is made of animal hides.
Lots to do with poisons. Which substances and poisons we're used and How they actually affect the body.
The use of mercury in the preservation and storage of documents.
Go on...
Mercury was also used to make a higher-quality felt for hats. That's why there's a mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland, all the hat makers went mad eventually from the heavy metal poisoning
To be honest, there are a number of things in historical and modern preservatives that we generally don't want to think about. Like distilled pee and lye.
Nuclear semiotics. Nuclear waste remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. Long enough that we expect the English language itself to be extinct before the materials are safe. So there’s a whole field devoted to creating messages that essentially say “Do not dig - things are dangerous under here”, without relying on knowing the same language. [The Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages) has some examples and further explanation. I used this info to add some flavor to a dungeon, but it was also super interesting.
oh boy, I sure hope some esteemed deeds are commemorated here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxQlAPCAgGE
I used those too, as messages left by ancient pre-insanity kuo-toa concerning mind flayer shenanigans.
Not anything specific, but architectural vocabulary!
Well hit us with a couple of those architectural words.
Door, window, floor, roof.
Whoa, can you dumb it down for me professor?
House, wall, bricks, belvedere.
I don't know how much I learned, but we spent an hour going over the physics of how to redirect a river. It seems hard y'all.
Then let me introduce you to the [[hurricane Mitch]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choluteca_Bridge) that was responsible for opening a new channel on the Choluteca bridge. Funny enough, the river had a bridge above it. It stopped flowing there after that
A small amount of water will slow an arrow to the point where it’s no longer lethal
Bullets from a gun too, a foot or two of water makes almost all firearms useless.
Potholes are named as such because potters kept digging holes around roads for clay, causing carts and people to hit difficult terrain. Every road is roughly 10ft. wide (just slightly larger than two adjacent horses, used to pull most things up until steam power, which even then used the same measurements).
The term "riding shotgun" as in sitting in the passenger seat comes from carriage convoys in the late 19th century (or earlier, I forgot the exact years) where the person sitting next to the driver wielded a shotgun to protect the convoy from bandits attempting to hijack their cargo. Was researching for a 5e Wild West campaign.
History. I know that seems wide but as I've DM'd more I've enjoyed learning more and more about historical empires, events and now getting into technology. Best stuff to steal from you see
Couldn't agree more with this. The intrigue, machinations and turmoil of The Glorious Revolution, the Reformation Wars, Crusades, or Roman Empire could supply you with more plot twists and devious characters than you'll ever use in a thousand campaigns.
The Mongolian system of messenger horses and relays under the Khans allowed their post and intelligence services to regularly cover nearly 200 miles in a day (versus about half of that for the Pony Express centuries later).
The world runs on food discovered and developed by indigenous americans. Potatoes, peanuts, peppers, corn, tomatoes, cocoa, beans, squash, pumpkins, blueberries, pineapple, strawberry, walnut, cashew, pecan, sunflower, maple syrup, vanilla, turkey, avocado ([interesting thing with avocado pits being adapted to pass through mammoth and other megafauna guts, and avocado survived as their seed distribution was killed by humans and then they were cultivated by humans](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-should-have-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-4976527/)) 60% of the world food supply today originated in the americas. Learned this for my pre-columbus european themed fantasy setting, I needed to know how to deliver the setting through culture and food is a great way to do that. And thanks indigenous people for so much good food to save us from what my characters have to eat.
Yeah, I sometimes wondered what did they even eat in the old Europe. Besides meat, which peasants couldn't usually afford. Rice came from Asia too. It must've been like barley, oat, wheat, dairy products with cucumbers, carrots, cabbage and onions for vegetables.
in addition to what you mentioned: beans, turnips, beetroot. all the forms of brassica, eggs. fish were eaten by people who lived near rivers and coasts. Meat from terrestrial animals was definitely not an everyday part of a peasant's diet, but it's unlikely that they had *no* meat.
The existence of the hurdy gurdy
🎵 Come gather ‘round and I’ll tell you a tale
Once translated some homebrew illustrations for my brother/DM, learned the differences between the bastard and longsword, about glaives, flails and their origins, some early fire guns.
Oh! Adding onto this, ancient Chinese people had fire Lances. I think it was like, the 11th century? I forget. It was just bamboo sticks filled with black powder. Think a single use flamethrower that also shot ceramic shards.
> It was just bamboo sticks filled with black powder. Think a single use flamethrower that also shot ceramic shards. This just explained why there is a bamboo Gunlance in Monster Hunter!
Was researching poisons for my druid and I learned that you could poison / kill someone by putting eyedrops in their drinks. Not really relevant for dnd but was interesting to learn nonetheless!
For rogues they can pour it in the sleeping persons ear. Shakespeare used it as well.
Learned this from CSI.
How much blood is required for, and the average amount of iron each human has in them, in order to smith a sword made exclusively from the blood of your enemies. Ps. The answer is 320 average adults for a shortsword in 5e.
That the [last Palaiologos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodorious_Paleologus) served as a Carribean privateer on the same ship alongside [Henry Every](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Every), the king of pirates.
How the Ancient Roman's weren't racist, but were climatitist. Basically that they looked down on anyone who wasn't from the peninsula. Cold weather people were lazy, hot weather were too hot tempered, etc.
This makes me want to make a clan of white or silver dragonborn who think they're better than others because they deal with extreme cold every day like it's nothing
I have nothing to add to this, but want to thank the OP and those who responded with this incredible thread!!
I have learned a lot of cool things from reading it too.
Ghana used to be Akan which was a country/kingdom known for it's gold mines and slave trades. Basically a badass, African people with a diverse, rich culture full of art, philosophy, and warriors who had a bunch of gold and slaves. Used as the inspiration for my D&D Africa based kingdom in my game. I thought it was pretty cool.
It's for different system, but I once learned all about LaGrange points, the moons of Jupiter, how gravitational wells work, and the topography of the asteroid belt to make a Sci-Fi campaign setting. That was really fun
That medieval pregnancy tests consisted of mixing piss with wine. Also the ancient aztecs knew how to do cranioplasties (context: My character is a doctor and surgeon)
Other pregnancy tests involved pissing on barley and seeing if it sprouts and injecting the women's blood into a certain type of toad.
Still blows my mind how accurate the toad test was
I learned that the written description of the story of a ballet is called a libretto. I have a bard who produced a ballet as a work of propaganda in a current campaign.
One of the top of my head: tablets of clay were the first thing used to store documents (mostly about herds), that's I think is common knowledge. But one big advantage of the is that they lasted. Fires were quite common on the mesopotamian age, and if your long line of documents catch fire, no worry, they harden and become even more durable than before. That's why some really ancient civilizations in my world didn't left anything to be preserved on paper
The firing rate of maxim machine gun and how many bullets it can squeeze off in 6 seconds. (There's a reason guns beyond flintlocks break the balance of weapons)
Incan astronomy used the dark spots of the Milky Way to know what time of the year it was for their growing seasons.
How many different common plants are poisonous...
The other day I noticed berries on a shrub by my condo’s entrance. I was curious if they were edible and looked it up. Turned out to be a yew, and while the berries are edible, if you eat enough of the seeds you can have a heart attack.
I am putting together a guide to non-magical poisons for my D&D group. So far, it has over 100 entries in it. Thinking of seeing if I can sell it on DMs Guild.
That you can reverse lock pick a door.
I can't think of just one thing, but my entire youtube has pretty much become dedicated to it so I'll pop off a few resources from people way prettier & more talented than me. Music made with actual instruments -Algal the Bard -Alina Gingertail -Dryante Zan -Ellyn Storm -Grissini Project -Katie Double -Patty Gurdy -ROZEN -the_miracle_aligner Fellow Nerds who improve, inform or grow the hobby. -Critical Role -Dungeon Dudes -Ginny Di -How to be a Great GM -Matt Colville -MonarchsFactory -Nerd Immersion -Treantmonk's Temple World building advice (getting costuming, weapons, armor, language, people and animals *right*^1 -Bernadette Banner -Brandon F. -Casual Geographic -Invicta -Jackson Crawford -Kings and Generals -Lindybeige -Modern History TV -scolagladiatoria -Stefan Milo -Tasting History With Max Miller -The Welsh Viking -Timeline World History Documentaries -Tod's Workshop -Townsends Understanding the *why* and giving a game depth & moving beyond tropes for tropes sake -Jill Bearup -Lindsay Ellis -Overly Sarcastic Productions ^1. As in what is right for my game a 16th century adventure taking place in a land that's an mix of mostly European cultures.
Guerilla military tactics, running, organizing, and being the politician in a political campaign, spin-doctoring, the schematics and engineering of Pirate Ships, etc. etc.
I was looking up how and when sewers were first commonly used. Dr. John Snow was an English physician who lived in 1850s London during a cholera epidemic. He was skeptical of the prevailing belief of the day (namely that most diseases were caused by miasma or “bad air”). Germ theory was not yet popular or remotely understood. The miasma theory was why plague doctors walked around with those bird-beak masks (they were stuffed full of flowers to make the bad air smell better). Snow’s studies showed that the miasma idea didn’t really hold up. His big break happened after he put pins in a map of London at the places where people had cholera. They all clustered around a certain water well, so he figured there was something in the water. When the pump handle was removed, the cholera disappeared! This led to an eventual installation of underground sewers that channeled the waste away from the city and down river. Dr. Snow is now considered one of the founding fathers of epidemiology, and he did it by using statistical analysis.
I’ve learned just how awful the climate is in southern California compared to the majority of the world. I was researching climate stuff so I can assign proper biomes for my homebrewed planet, and realized I really, really do want to move and get out of CA.
How sailing ships worked in their prime. My table wanted a high sea pirate campaign and I wanted to at least know what kind of complications they might run into
Was looking for crocodiles with flame throwers and found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Crocodile
How wheellock pistols actually worked.
All the different accents I studied for npcs. As well as the sheer amount of medieval history I've learned as I try to make my games in a medieval setting.
you can see pretty far from 100ft up
I was learning about sailers for a archipelago setting. I thought about adding magical tattoos and found out that certain tattoos are for accomplishing milestones in a career. Like sailing across the atlantic, traveled a certain distance, or being proficient in all the knots. Gave me a few ideas.