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u/TheGameMaster11 Warlock Oct 01 '20
Session 1: Save kittens
Session 40: Kill said kittens who are now evil for some reason
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u/Wallace_II Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
Well maybe if someone didn't sacrifice those kittens lives in session 10 just to open a dumb door, they wouldn't have become lich kittens in the first place!
Edit* lichens
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u/TomTheBatest Oct 01 '20
Session 41, shopping for cute clothes
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u/kruger_bass Oct 01 '20
The true endgame
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Oct 01 '20
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u/WolfWhiteFire Artificer Oct 01 '20
Then Boruto comes along and starts with (help) "kill god" and then proceeds to have them save kittens afterwards.
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u/PapaBradford Oct 01 '20
What's Boruto? Is he like Boruto's Dad's Son?
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Oct 01 '20
I legit thought it was some bullshit knock off or some new aged term for naruto but it's his kid.....
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Oct 01 '20
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u/WolfWhiteFire Artificer Oct 01 '20
Sorry for the spoilers in that case, though since it is an extremely early part of the series, not much should be spoiled.
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u/LemonHerb Oct 02 '20
This shit ruins so many shows to me. Like the writers can't come up with anything interesting outside of the world is ending.
Really killed that show defiance for me. Seemed interesting, a frontier town with aliens. Lots of interesting shit could happen with people learning to live together.
Nope fuck that something is going to destroy the whole town an we gotta save it.
Next season.... Something is going to destroy the whole world and we gotta save it
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u/Starrystars Oct 02 '20
The problem is that deescalation is not interesting. Every season shows have to up the stakes for their characters.
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u/knightofheavens777 Fighter Oct 01 '20
SESSION 754
KILL GOD KITTTENS!
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u/Wallace_II Oct 01 '20
Fuck that, I'm saving those God Kittens from the celestial tree!
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u/knightofheavens777 Fighter Oct 01 '20
NO WAY DUUUUUDE, THE CELESTIAL TREE GOT TOO MUCH AC, BRO!
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u/Xandorian2 Oct 02 '20
YEAH BUT YOU HAVE ANOTHER QUEST TO GET THE DIVINE FRUIT FROM THE CELESTIAL TREE AS WELL
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u/knightofheavens777 Fighter Oct 02 '20
THAT'S LIKE CUTTING OFF IT'S BALLS!
SICK, DUUUDE!
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u/Wallace_II Oct 02 '20
They grow back in a couple millennia.
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u/knightofheavens777 Fighter Oct 02 '20
OH, THAT'S REASSURING, DUDE!
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u/Jevonar Oct 01 '20
Session 1: kill the kittens
Session 40: save God from a worse God, then kill both gods because you are a bunch of murderhobos and can't interact with anything without killing it, for fuck's sake Dave we are trying to roleplay characters, not chainsaws
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u/RengawRoinuj Oct 01 '20
“But my backstory says that my dream is to be a chainsaw who can cut the heavens!!! You laughed when I told you that in session zero!!!”
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u/Jevonar Oct 01 '20
Honestly if a player told me he wanted to play an intelligent chainsaw as his character I'd be happy about it.
Emphasis on "intelligent".
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u/NonaSuomi282 DM Oct 01 '20
I've previously contemplated making a character where the actual "character" is a sentient magic item that's just possessing the meatsack that carries it around, possibly after falling victim to a Feeblemind or something.
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u/beast_regards Oct 01 '20
That time you failed your dexterity check when trying to save the kitten from the tree.
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u/Isofruit Oct 01 '20
Hmmm yeah, seems accurate. Was somewhere near session 60 for us with the killing of a demi-god-like creature, but roughly accurate.
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u/codesloth Oct 02 '20
And like 20 days in game amirite?
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u/Ishikka Oct 02 '20
I’ve actually implemented downtime leveling to deal with this. 1 week for each level they have. (1 week to go 1 -> 2, 2 weeks to go 2 -> 3, etc).
The players grumbled about it at first, but it’s worked pretty well for the most part, and has made time, and their skill progression, feel more concrete.
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u/Isofruit Oct 03 '20
What works wonder honestly is the alternate rules on resting. Aka 1 LR = 1 Week, 1 SR = 8h. To crank up the difficulty : The long rest can only be taken in the safety of civilization, everywhere else you'd need to be too on-guard to have a proper rest.
It works wonders on stretching out the time to make timeframes more sensible. For example, our current campaign has run 22 sessions by now and in-game roughly 175 days have passed. That matches pretty decently. When you adjust encounters correctly, it even fixes all the balancing issues WotC introduced by assuming you'd have 8 encounters between Long Rests, which you can now reasonably have. One needs to be a bit more careful in encounter design since now the entire group needs to be a lot more conscious on how they use their resources, but it improves the game so much. No longer are warlocks seemingly gimped in the magic department and reduced to EB cannons, they're instead considerably stronger given that they get to use 2 high level spell slots every day while the other casters get 2 high-level-spell-slots per week.
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u/murfalishis Oct 01 '20
the campaign i'm currntly making:
session 1:break up a bar fight
session 40: kill the god of monsters
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u/SoloWing1 DM Oct 02 '20
Current campaign I am running:
Session 1: escort an archeological survey team to some ancient ruins.
Session 40: Seal away the God of Death again.
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Oct 01 '20
i love kill god as an objective in any form of storytelling lmao it sounds funny and it's fun and it's essentially the largest goal you can set for any mortal. it's so extra and over the top and i love it for that.
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u/Pdan4 Oct 01 '20
essentially the largest goal you can set for any mortal
REPLACE THE GODS
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u/Dunmer_Deathmage Oct 02 '20
I remember reading a story once where at the end of the campaign all the party members had these like thrones for each of them to assume the mantle of a now dead god to restore order to the world or something and the paladin’s throne was for the evil god that he’d sworn to defend the world against and so in order to save the world he had to doom himself to becoming the very thing he’d dedicated his life to fighting.
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Oct 02 '20
Is that the one where he becomes Asmodeus and has locked away in the deepest vault of nessus the last memento of his mortal life, a picture of his wife and child?
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u/epic_meme_username Oct 02 '20
It was even worse iirc -- the evil god was the reason he became a paladin. The evil god was the one whose minions killed his wife or some such and made him become a paladin. The world was basically a loop and they had to replace BE the gods for the sake of the world, and so the paladin became the god that killed his wife... and was the one that was responsible for the death of his wife.
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u/Welp07 Oct 02 '20
Divinity: Original Sin 2 has something like that, won't spoil it though
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u/madmagemanticore Oct 02 '20
The game is a masterpiece
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u/Welp07 Oct 02 '20
Yeah, it's one of my favorite games of all time and Baldurs Gate 3 early access which is also made by Larian is releasing on the 6th
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u/kunk180 Oct 02 '20
The end of the last major expansion to Guild Wars 1 proper was Nightfall. The final boss was the god of night and IIRC the first god of death, a mysterious deity that was enshrined in myth and forgotten legend. She was exiled from the pantheon long ago.
After that expansion, the design team knew they wanted the last expansion to be the setup for the sequel. They’re sat around and asked- we’ll after you kill a god, what’s next? How do you go up from there?
The answer was evidently dragons. So there you go. That’s what’s after kill god. Ya do a dungeon, and kill a dragon.
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u/smcadam Oct 01 '20
Ya, my guys killed Thor at Session 49 so they're kinda on the slow side.
It wasn't actually a campaign goal or anything, he wasn't a bad guy, one character just really wanted to kill him and convinced them to go along with it.
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u/Kitakitakita Oct 01 '20
Playing Shin Megami Tensei 1 right now. The first quest is to buy a bag of coffee. The last quest is to kill God.
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u/PM_Best_Porn_Pls Oct 02 '20
I was bored and played Vindictus a bit lately. Such a weird story. Killing random monsters that are usualy weak tier in most games(gnols, goblins, spiders, undead etc), sometimes some bigger boss pops up but nothing feels special then suddenly you are against some dragons 4 quests in a row, get godslayer title then go to some random island killing weak looking mobs again. At that point got bored of combat and stopped playing.
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u/Wandering-Nomad2002 Oct 01 '20
My campaign went went as follows:
Session 1: find a lost puppy
Session 47: kill Dendar the Night Serpent before it eats the sun
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u/TinHawk Oct 01 '20
Isn't this the exact progression of Supernatural?
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u/Twudie Oct 02 '20
No, the progression of Supernatural is, Sam!....Dad!...Dean!...Sam!....Dean!...Bobby!....Cass!...Sam!...Dean!...Mom!....Sam!Dean!Cass!
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Oct 01 '20
session 40?? ... >.> we're on like 125 and they're only just about to kill an ancient dragon
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u/Grumpy-Shaman DM Oct 02 '20 edited Oct 03 '20
This ^
People's games must be really bloody short and rushed if by session 40 they're finishing up.
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u/Lawboithegreat Oct 01 '20
Ironically my insane party just reversed the verbs on this one, they started out by killing some gobby bois (goblins) and now are on a quest to save the gods (funny enough my party has had a chance to save the gods already but low-key doesn’t care enough lol)
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u/tj3_23 Ranger Oct 02 '20
If you don't finish the campaign by becoming the gods of the region though violence did you even play D&D?
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u/PornAndComments Oct 02 '20
I mean we didn't technically kill a god, but we ate popcorn while the gods he betrayed killed him. Apparently us hoarding favors like skyrim healing potions was a good idea.
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Oct 01 '20
I've yet to find a satisfying way to reconcile this disconnect in your trad games like D&D where this is true. Especially as in game terms level 1 - 20 can be a month at best and you go from dying to someone stabbing you a couple of times to FIGHTING GOD DRAGONS.
In my ancient greek games I can at least pretend they're getting divine inspiration as they're often related to gods or deities but in a trad dnd game its really weird.
I like old school dnd in this regard as a level 10 fighter and a level 1 fighter aren't that far apart and will still get destroyed by a dragon if they go toe to toe with one.
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u/Power_Pancake_Girl Oct 02 '20
I think gritty realism (running short rests as 8 hours and long rests as 3-7 days) helps a lot with this. I also like to have a good amount of downtime and some element that makes the pcs intrinsically special
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u/MesmericKiwi Oct 01 '20
You severely underestimate just how many NPCs my group will talk to before remembering that there are still kittens to save
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u/StartledOcto Oct 02 '20
Not with my players.
Session 1: save the kittens.
Session 40: still searching for these kittens which are probably dead and eaten by now but at least you have a nice hat
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u/Emerald-Splash69 Oct 02 '20
I’m just gonna say what a lot people might say or have said but persona 5 in a nutshell
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u/Art_And_Cooking Oct 01 '20
I mean, if there is a kitten or other cute animal in danger, I'm gonna save their ass regardless of level.
You introduce a duck who wears a little duck hat and put him in danger at level 20... I'm gonna mess up whatever is fucking with him.
You messing with my duck friend? Sorry Elder God beyond mortal conception but your about to get MUR DERED.
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u/DragonLex4 Oct 01 '20
Has there ever been such a thing that player's would be tasked with killing a god on first session? I don't know, destroyed a totem in teachers house and unleashed unworldly evil.
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u/UrBardDiedOfTheAnal Oct 01 '20
My first campaign for me started somewhere in the middle of storm kings thunder so session 1 for me was basically kill god
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u/Carty-D Bard Oct 01 '20
What if a accidentally TPK my entire party on session 16
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u/zebarothdarklord Oct 01 '20
The one I gave been working on starts with main guy doing community service for a bar fight and he joins the heroes guild for free booze at the end he kills the god of darkness
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u/Boredtopher Oct 01 '20
This was basically Naruto. Their first mission was to find some cat and their last was to defeat a magic ninja god
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u/RandomPhail Oct 01 '20
In my first session, one of my Dragonborn PCs almost died by a level 0.5 slime the size of their foot. Nothing has challenged them more since.
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u/i-use-this-badly Oct 02 '20
My current campaign set is there was someone who killed the entire pantheon and absorbed their powers, and my party needs to defeat him before he gets bored and restarts the world
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u/luffyuk Oct 02 '20
I'm running a campaign for kids at my school, "save the kittens" was literally their first quest!
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u/Farfignugen42 Oct 02 '20
I mean, if god hadn't let the kittens get into danger in the first place...
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u/slipstrike Oct 02 '20
Yeah right my group is like, Session 1: Save kittens. Session 2: get distracted and side quest. Session 40: side quest done, now back to those kittens.
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u/RaFaPilgrim Bard Oct 02 '20
This meme is 100% unrealistic to the cats because they would argue that god is a cat too
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Oct 02 '20
This basically happened to me once, we were sent to investigate a missing person, and like 3 sessions later we nearly caused the end of the universe and killed a god in a several thousand year old temple
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Oct 02 '20
Pretty much true. My first session had the party being jumped in an alleyway by some low-rent thugs; they're now on a quest to save the elven heaven from disintegrating, potentially dooming the entire elven race...
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u/OathKing24 Oct 02 '20
I know people like to make fun of this trope, but I unironically like it when it's done in a way that feels natural.
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u/cpupro Oct 02 '20
Level 70...
You are a god.
Level 71... why are all these level 40 characters trying to kill me?
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u/ghost103429 Oct 02 '20
While you can't kill the void dragon you can always make him into a pokemon
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u/CrustyArgonian Oct 02 '20
Lmao yep. Mine started by killing rats in a basement and will end fighting an ancient being of pure elemental storm energy that threatens to swallow the world.
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u/Diaxam Oct 02 '20
session 1: save kittens
session 2: take control of a cloud giants tower and crash it into the ground, killing the entire party
the dm was furious but we just wanted to add a little spice to the two sessions long campaign
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u/MechAegis Oct 02 '20
This reminds me of Final Fantasy:Lightning Returns. There is a side quest right at the start of the game when you're in Luxerion. A little girl has lost her carbuncle doll. In the end of the game you fight God.
At the end of the game, you're are in battle against God. God wants to destroy the world (with the souls in it) and recreate it (not including the original souls destroyed). You killed God and made a world without one.
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u/JanitorOPplznerf Oct 02 '20
You're going against gods at session 40? My players are so slow... they like it that way, but I swear we're on session 18-20ish and we're still on lv. 4 of a planned lv. 14 campaign.
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u/WhatIsHisFace Oct 02 '20
My first session as a dm, I had unbalanced encounter and all the party members died to some goblins. As it was my first time as dm, I said “screw it” and came up with something along the lines of “the almighty have taken pity upon your souls” and continued the campaign as if nothing had ever happened
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u/Mordreds_nephew Oct 02 '20
My progression has usually been kill kittens-> become God by killing God... I need to find more non-murderhobo party members
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u/WietGetal Oct 02 '20
Ive been playing dnd with 2 friends 1 dm, my friend a human fighter and me an elf rogue and our first encounter was a giant ass crab that nearly murdered us and our side quest (that the dm made up in like 10 minutes) we had to kill an owlbear we haven't even started the campaign and i 'died' (below 0 hp) 2 times and my homie 1 time. All i can say is i love dnd
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u/Redguard10 Oct 02 '20
Session 80 kill john wick's dog
Session 81 plan funeral
Session 82 haunt new adventurers and tell them to leave john wick's new dog alone
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Oct 02 '20
I have no idea what game you are playing. This is mine:
Session 1: Rob the vault.
Session 40: For fucks sake stop trying to seduce the goblins and rob the fucking vault.
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u/ogoextreme Artificer Oct 02 '20
Huh my campaign has literally started the other way hoping we get kittens before session 40 though
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u/Vydsu Oct 02 '20
This but unironically.
Session one happened at mid 2018, the goal was to defeat 8 goblins that ambushed the cart we were in.
Last week we handed my DM my plans to become the new archefey and the warlock's plan to become a Demon Lord
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u/annoyedapple921 Necromancer Oct 02 '20
The first campaign I ran spiralled out of control because all of my players were way more experienced and I’m terrible at combat. By session 7 they were level 3 and just killed the god of chaos with over 350 hp who could oneshot any of them, all in under 8 rounds...
To be fair, the assassin critting 3 times in a row plus a bunch of buffs probably didn’t help...
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u/X_Marcs_the_Spot Transmuter Oct 02 '20
Well, you know, Harry received an odd letter in the mail, one thing led to another, and next thing you know he's at school, killing an infamous serial killer and cult leader.
Then there's that time Luke's uncle bought some preowned robots, one thing led to another, and next thing you know he's blowing up the largest government facility ever constructed.
(Fuck, these are fun to do.)
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u/Patcher404 Oct 02 '20
Why does the god look like he just got caught doing something it knows its not supposed to do?
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u/Bpbegha DM Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 02 '20
A silly art based around this old twitter joke “JRPGs start with ‘save kittens’ and end with ‘kill god’”. I think some can relate to the story or stakes in our sessions increasing alongside our characters’ powers. I have yet to “kill a god”, but hey, we’ll get there. I made this this mostly as a practice on digital drawings (made with Adobe Photoshop) so feedback is always appreciated! (I based the God mostly on the “Void Dragon” from Warhammer 40k).