- I know D&D players are big fans of killing off characters' families, burning their hometowns to the ground, and murdering their one true love in order to spur a dramatic
quest for vengeance, but have you guys thought
about how much fun it could be to do the opposite of that? To have a living family that
can be a part of the game, with their own personalities and goals? To have a home that isn't just for flavor, but actually changes the way your character
experiences their world? To make your character's
relationships with NPCs have not just emotional, but mechanical impact on your gameplay? Today, I am gonna show you how! (upbeat electronic music) This video is sponsored by
the Dungeon Master's Guild. Many of you are probably familiar: DM's Guild is a community content program partnered with Wizards of the Coast where creators can legally
use official D&D material to create and share their
own brand new content for use with D&D. It is a treasure trove of genius
homebrew character options, adventures and settings,
rolling tables and mechanics to expand your game in a
ton of really creative ways. I can just get lost there. There are thousands and thousands of PDFs and every single one is
like game-changingly useful. You can use the code
GINNYGUILD to save 15% on any DM's Guild content
purchase of $15 or more through next Friday, August 13th. I will put the link and the
code into the description. But we are not talking about every game-changingly
useful supplement today, we are talking about one
game-changingly useful supplement, and that is "The Adventurer's
Domestic Handbook" by Lydia Van Hoy, including
writing from Ciarra Parry, Kayla Bayens, and Sadie Lowry. This extremely comprehensive
book is 150 plus pages of resources on how to
incorporate family, romance, and business and property
ownership into your campaigns and characters in a way that isn't just part of the narrative, it's also part of the gameplay. There is so much cool stuff
crammed into this book, which is honestly why I need a
whole video to talk about it. And I'm not even gonna be
able to cover everything. So first, I'll just give
you a quick overview of what's in the book and
what I think is exciting, and then I will, in full cosplay, introduce you to a brand
new character that I created using the subclasses,
backgrounds, and feats included in the book. That's a lot to cover,
so let's dive right in. The main domestic topics
the book covers are romance, family, business
ownership, and homemaking. It does a great job talking about how to include romance at your table, while respecting the
boundaries of your players, which is super key if you wanna include anything romantic or sexual in your game. There are 24 romanceable NPCs
ready to drop into your games, and each includes related
quests and encounters, and even relationship
milestones to help DMs show that characters are
growing closer together. For example, if you open up
to Bastian the human knight about your own past, he will tell you about his troubled
relationship with his father. There are mechanics for marriage, pregnancy, raising children, I think my favorite
romance-related tool in the book is that they've provided
an entire appendix of marriage ceremonies,
20 different options for how your characters might make their relationship official, everything from the private, romantic ceremony of Moonlight Vows, to the extravagant, city-wide
Festival of Many Masks. They also have some great suggestions for how to make a wedding session fun for everyone at the table, like going on a quest to
forge the wedding rings, or an ex crashing the
ceremony to cause trouble. Maybe your character sends money home to their family to support them or maybe they bring their
family with them, caravan-style. There are a bunch of options
for how to incorporate a living family as an
active part of gameplay. For example, your character
might be saving up money to send a sibling to a prestigious school, or on the lookout for a good
marriage match for them. My favorite family mechanic is that they've provided an
entire apprenticeship system, so a character can bring
along a family member or just a favorite NPC to teach them the tools of
their trade as an adventurer. This system actually allows
apprentice characters to level up over time, gaining
skills to help the party, like becoming proficient
with certain tool sets, or learning to cast some low-level spells. Does your character
want to open a business in a city where the party
spends a lot of time? Hire staff, earn profits? Or maybe they wanna run a traveling shop, conducting business wherever
the party happens to go, earning some extra pocket money. If I were DMing a player who wanted to do something like this, I would have no idea where to start. How much should it cost to
buy or rent a storefront? How much would you have to pay employees? How much profit could you expect to turn? This book covers all of it. Personally, I love the idea of adventurers setting up a little shop where they can sell their loot or offer their services
in a more formal way. Not only is it a great way
to help players feel invested in a specific town or city, it's also such an easy
in for quests and plots. Maybe the shop gets robbed and they have to track down the culprit, or maybe a competing shop opens up nearby and starts taking their business. It just opens up a whole host of new stuff that can happen at the table. Probably my favorite section, because I just love when I get
to play D&D like "The Sims," home ownership! Maybe your character wants to buy a house, or buy land and build a house, or maybe they're like my
character Aisling and her party, and they've come into a house, but aren't quite sure what to do with it. "The Adventurer's Domestic
Handbook" has tables with pricing and information
on everything you need to know to buy, rent, build, and even
renovate or staff a home. But hands down the part of this section that I am most amped about
is the atmosphere section, which allows players to
take short-term benefits from spending time doing
certain things in their home. For example, the Engaged Mind atmosphere says that if your character
spends time studying or reading in their
home, they get a plus two to intelligence-based
skills for the next hour. Or if you rest, have a good meal, spend quality time with your family, you can add double your
constitution modifier to any healing that you take
over the next eight hours. And then of course, there
are the character options. This section includes
15 different subclasses, like the Barbarian Path of the Protector, or the Monk Way of the Devoted, all inspired by domestic pursuits. There are also five new backgrounds, like the Devoted Parent or the Farmer, and six new feats, like Pocket
Healer or Arcane Guardian. I'm gonna be honest, a lot
of these character options would be a perfect fit for
existing characters that I have. For example, Edith would be a fantastic
Harmony Domain cleric, a subclass that is specifically noted as being well-suited
for hopeless romantics. This subclass has features
like Helping Hands, which allows you to
magically bond two creatures, making their Help action more powerful when used on one another,
or Healing Chain, which would allow Edith to
provide a little hit point boost to a second creature nearby the
target of any healing spell. In fact, instead of telling you
about the character options, how about I show you? I created a character using the options in the "Adventurer's Domestic Handbook," and I think it's high
time that you meet her. (gentle violin music) - Ho there! Fancy a round of Liar's Dice? It's only one silver to play, and if today's bad luck holds for me, you'll double it in a blink. No, not a gambler? That's probably for the best. It's been a slow day, though, so will you at least
share a story with me? Come, I'll provide the libations. (liquid trickling) Cheers. What brings you out this way? Hmm. That's a long journey. I see now why you might not
want to risk your travel funds. It may be a bit strange
considering I make my living off of gamblers, but I don't like them. I much prefer the company
of more prudent types, like yourself. I'm Mariska. I'm a cautious one myself, although these days I
don't have to be, so much. But being raised in the
clutches of a sea hag, fear gets into your
blood, and it stays there, like salt in saltwater. Brinemaw Kate she was called. She kidnapped me as a baby. At least, I think she did. I don't remember anything before her. Perhaps my parents just gave me up. I call the other girls my sisters, even though we've no
reason to think we are. But we were as good as
sisters, doing her bidding. It was hard, but we had each other. I leapt at the change to get
out though, when he offered it. Lord Winston Verdlyn. I lived in an underwater city, of course, but I was running an errand to the docks of the nearby
human city when I met him. He took a shine to me. To be honest, I don't know
if I really liked him, or if I just liked his offer. Marrying a rich man, I could
get me and my sisters out. Perhaps we could have a
real life, our own life. It took everything for we four
to escape the hag's clutches, especially with the smallest,
Nerina, being so young. It was a near thing. The whole time, I thought to myself, the only chance I've ever taken, and fortune will punish me for the risk. Lord Verdlyn, he didn't help. He didn't know. I couldn't tell him the truth. I wanted him to think he'd
found some fine sea elf lady to be his bride. I think I was afraid that
he would change his mind if he found out the truth. Foolishness. When it was him hiding
a secret the whole time. It was only days before the wedding that I found out he'd gambled it all away. The family fortune he'd sworn he would protect me and my
girls with, it was in ruin. He was deeply in debt. I don't know how long he thought he could keep up the charade. Of course, we fled. Two escapes before the
moon even came full again. But we had nothing. No food, no money, no shelter, just four girls in a foreign
city, desperate to survive. We couldn't go back, of course. I suppose that's why I did what I did, even though, as I said, I'm
usually quite a cautious person. I'd never played Liar's Dice before. They could tell, I think,
the men at the table. Probably thought me an easy mark. We had only the clothes on our backs and a few copper pieces,
just pocket change, and my engagement ring, of course, but I wasn't about to gamble
that on the roll of a die. So I said no. But in the alley outside
the tavern, I met a woman. Or at least, she looked like a woman. She was fair and elegant. Her clothes were so fine, finer
than anything I'd ever seen. And she offered me a pact. Lady Luck, she called herself. She told me to go back into the tavern and make a bet with my ring. That she would stand behind
me, turning the dice, securing my wins. 500 gold pieces, she vowed to me. Enough, more than enough to
protect me and my sisters. All I had to do was vow to serve her. Serving wasn't new to
me, I had always served. What was a new mistress for
me, if I could free my sisters? It happened exactly as she said. They were angry, of course, the men, but she ensured we had a lucky escape. Over the years, she taught
me how to control luck in my own small ways. That's the secret to this little cart. I can make someone win a
little, and then lose a lot. They're not really gambling, not with me. I always win, in the end. (Mariska sips) So, you see, it's lucky you
didn't say yes to me today. Perhaps my Lady is smiling
down on you as well. That was kind of you. To listen. My thanks. You will have good
fortune on your journey, fair weather, smooth
roads, friendly meetings. May it keep you and
yours safe, for a time. Fare thee well. (dice clattering) Mariska is a Sea Elf Warlock, and she was inspired by the
Lady Luck Patron subclass and the Runaway Betrothed background in the "Adventurer's Domestic Handbook." The Lady Luck Patron gives her warlocks control over their fortune
and the fortunes of others. That means Mariska gets an
expanded spell list that includes spells like Bless, Clairvoyance,
and Dominate Person. First level gives her proficiency in persuasion and deception, and the Lady Luck grants
her the boon of a business and an empty covered
caravan to run it from, as well as a 500 gold investment, startup costs, if you will. As she levels, she gains
abilities that allow her to reroll her own dice and also force or
help others to reroll theirs. At 14th level, she gets
a super cool feature called Turning Tides, where, if a nearby creature
rolls a natural one, she can use her reaction to create something
called a Fortune Token, which allows her to force
a critical success at will, to balance the flow of luck. Her background as a runaway betrothed gives her additional skill proficiencies, I chose Insight and Perception,
as well as equipment that includes fine clothes
and an engagement ring. I'd like to think that
when Mariska made her pact, Lady Luck transformed her engagement ring into her arcane focus, which
is why I had her wearing an engagement ring in that scene, even though she is
obviously no longer engaged. With this background, she gets
the feature Disappearing Act, which means she knows how
to make herself scarce for short periods of time
without being tracked. Such as, if any disgruntled
gamblers wanna get back at her for their losses. There are also rolling tables
for personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. I picked the personality trait of always questioning
others' ulterior motives, and the ideal of preventing emotions from clouding her logical thinking. I didn't really feel like
any of the bonds fit her, so instead I'm just focusing
on her bond with her sisters. One of the flaws is I hide a secret that could ruin my ex's life, which is obviously his lost fortune, although I don't think she realizes that she could weaponize that against him. Finally, I chose the feat Arcane Guardian, which allows her to give
temporary hit points for one round equal to her spellcasting
modifier to one ally within 30 feet whenever she
casts a spell above first level. I liked this one because even
though I don't see her sisters being with her on the battlefield if I were to actually play this character, I could see her developing
this kind of skill in the first place in order
to protect her sisters, so I feel like it makes sense for her. If I were to play her in a game using the mechanics in
the Domestic Handbook, she would of course, bring her
sisters along in her caravan, and I think she would
probably take on one of them as an apprentice. It would be super fun
to try out that system and also just narratively play
out that bond between sisters who have been through the same
weird, difficult childhood. I hope this gave you some good ideas about how to incorporate
domestic life into your D&D game if that would be fun for
you and for your table. I know this kind of
thing isn't for everyone, but as a small part of a
game, I feel like these things can offer such a new and interesting facet to the life of an adventurer, and the "Adventurer's Domestic
Handbook" is comprehensive. If you wanna learn more
about all these mechanics and features and options and characters, I would highly suggest
checking out the full PDF at the link in the description. And thank you to DM's Guild
for sponsoring this video, there are so many amazing
supplements there to explore. If you're looking for more, you might enjoy my friend
Jesse's "Puppeteer of Valestone," an emotional and mysterious adventure that can be played as a one-shot
or dropped into a campaign, and, fun fact, was
written for my birthday. Thanks, Jesse. Or my friend R. Morgan Slade's
"College of the Crow's Nest," a bard college for treasure hunters. I will link those in
the description as well. Remember to use the code GINNYGUILD before Friday, August 13th to get 15% off your purchase
of $15 or more at DM's Guild. And if you wanna keep up
with the latest releases and deals at the Dungeon Master's Guild, follow them on Twitter @DMs_Guild. What kind of domestic elements would you wanna bring into your games or have you brought into your games? I would love to hear about
your characters' families, marriages, businesses, children,
and homes in the comments.
