journeyinc

[journeyinc]

Op... what the hell is this?

“What indie RPGs have you played recently?”

Me:

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oh also? An absolutely freaky thing I'm seeing yt leftists do?

STOP TRYING TO TRACK DOWN PROTESTORS THAT DO 'BADASS STUFF'. STOP POSTING ABOUT IT ONLINE.

PEOPLE FUCKING DIE.

AND IT'S USUALLY SOMEONE MELANATED.

THE GOVERNMENT IS WATCHING YOU FUCKING DUMBASS.

y'all are so stuck on egoistic heroism that every time someone does something 'sick' at a protest you wanna turn them in to the next celebrity to have a parasocial relationship with and then they go missing.

Tf is wrong w y'all.

[journeyinc]

modern day “far left” ideology

- a good government should try to promote happiness and comfort and reduce suffering and death of its society

- you should treat everyone, even people you don’t know/like/agree with, with at least a baseline level of empathy and kindness simply for the fact that they humans

- murdering or torturing anyone or anything is wrong

- it’s good to acknowledge and weigh the consequences of your actions

- helpfulness is good. compassion is good

- sometimes minding your own business is healthy

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I love the blade wobble

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Chaos goblin.

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[journeyinc]

Glad to be of service! I've larped a bunch of antitribu from a Ventrue anti who had the market corned on transportation to the point he was called "the Iron Pimp" to my favorite, a malk priest who had been a a southern baptist preacher in life, and brought a fervor and intensity to his sermons of Caine... and really got the players into shouting "Priase Caine!" as a call back.

I think. I'm going to try to put together some kind of. Sabbat... event. Maybe the characters are at a war gathering or something-- think it could be fun to have Sabbat characters being able to show out a little and not have to be all fancy for it unless they want to be.

Maybe a collab that's like "the Sabbat are on the hunt" and you have to draw your character geared up to kill or like... teeth out, vic'd up, something like that

[Beatrix voice] Enough of this dignity we gotta show these "Kindred" why their elders fear us so bad

[journeyinc]

Also 9sharing years of larp sabbat experience here) It's really easy to include multiple ritaeat the same time. In the middle of a Blood Feast, or other celebration, is a great time to step on toes, or want to change pack leadership, and set up a monomancy. To make the party more fun, add a fire dance. Think about the fun of multiple Pack Priests doing a round robin sermon of cain.

I think. I'm going to try to put together some kind of. Sabbat... event. Maybe the characters are at a war gathering or something-- think it could be fun to have Sabbat characters being able to show out a little and not have to be all fancy for it unless they want to be.

Maybe a collab that's like "the Sabbat are on the hunt" and you have to draw your character geared up to kill or like... teeth out, vic'd up, something like that

[Beatrix voice] Enough of this dignity we gotta show these "Kindred" why their elders fear us so bad

[journeyinc]

May I suggest making use of the Auctoricas Ritae? A blood Feast, a Wild Hunt, or even on of the holidays, like the Pallae Grande? Ritae | Saligia Wikia | Fandom for more ideas.

I think. I'm going to try to put together some kind of. Sabbat... event. Maybe the characters are at a war gathering or something-- think it could be fun to have Sabbat characters being able to show out a little and not have to be all fancy for it unless they want to be.

Maybe a collab that's like "the Sabbat are on the hunt" and you have to draw your character geared up to kill or like... teeth out, vic'd up, something like that

[Beatrix voice] Enough of this dignity we gotta show these "Kindred" why their elders fear us so bad

[journeyinc]

Tatiana the tiger is my Killdozer. She broke out of her enclosure to kill one young man and maul two others. She went to extreme lengths to scale her enclosure’s wall — concrete chips were embedded in her paws.

She did so bc those 3 sadists were harassing her and the other tigers:

After Tatiana killed Sousa, she left his corpse to follow the blood trail of the other 2:

This shit was PERSONAL for her, they deserved it, and she should still be alive.

[journeyinc]

I believe in gentle parenting. Unfortunately many people refuse to parent their child at all under the guise of gentle parenting. Sometimes you’ve got to look your fourth grader in the eye and say “Little dude, that was an asshole move.”

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The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.

[journeyinc]

i cant belive that you of all people are at risk of homelessness >:(

homelessness isnt a problem that should exist in general, but you, specifically, should have like a million dollars from the star trek novels alone

(chuckle) Wouldn't that be lovely! (And it's kind of you to be thinking that way.)

But alas, that's not how it works.

When you're working in/for other licensed universes—which is always on a work-for-hire basis—the only really significant payment(s) you're likely to see will happen when you've turned in a given book and it's been formally accepted. And even then, the payment's rarely going to be higher than low-to-mid five figures... which (after your literary agent gets their cut, and after your taxes on the income get paid) won't take you very far even in a single year, let alone the years that follow.

If you're very lucky in your publisher, or have a very good agent—which I do—you may even manage to get some royalties on such a novel. But they'll be at the low end of the scale—maybe 2-3% of the cover price. (Bearing in mind that even for original novels in one's own universe, an author rarely gets more than 8-10% of a given book's cover price in royalties.) And when the book goes out of print, the royalties stop.

So just because the owner of the IP makes a lot of money off it, doesn't mean that any significant amount of it necessarily trickles down to the writer. (sigh) Nor does the fact that a book is good, or the writer is good, or both, make any significant difference to this kind of mathematics. Eventually, pretty much inevitably, sooner or later sales of a book drop off and the publisher lets it go out of print.

(shrug) It's not like I didn't know this was eventually going to happen when I wrote my Star Trek work. I did that because I loved Trek (and still do), and I was sure I could write a better Trek novel than anyone else had up until that point. (And maybe that was even true. Who knows.) To have done the work was the thing that primarily mattered.

But let this be a reminder to folks that only a low percentage of writers make enough from their writing alone to live on: and that something like 90% of writers at times live at or near the poverty line and sometimes slip below it. ...And for all of us, even for strong writers who seem moderately successful and have other income streams, bare patches happen: times when publishers don't pay (for example, I still haven't been paid anything for Disney/Marvel's reissue of my Spider-Man books), times when you can't work, or times when accident or illness or other unexpected circumstance eats the cash you've stashed away to serve as a cushion.

This is not a safe lifestyle. With talent and luck and endless slogging away at/over the writing mechanism of your choice, and with the support of your readers (who I'm very much thinking of at the moment!—and thanks again to the Ebooks Direct customers and Ko-Fi friends who just now saved our butts), it can be survived. Which, from day to day, @petermorwood and I do our best to keep on doing.

...In any case: people who even at this end of time can say things about my work such as you did at the top of this, make me feel like about a million dollars. 🙂 (And since today I have both an upper respiratory infection and laryngitis, that's quite a trick!) ...So thanks.

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"fictional"

So last month I got hit by a car and died right. Which I didn't initially realize until I watched some guy haul my body into his pickup and drive off. Which, being that it's deep in rural Michigan, I assume means my body will make some venison jerky and maybe some wall decoration, and I'll be resigned to being one of hundreds of deer ghosts floating around Saginaw, which is w/e. But then I find out the guy works at a taxidermy shop or something, and he's actually pretty good at stuffing and mounting deer carcasses, which I come to find out when I find myself face to face with my old body in the shop window. So naturally, I figure since ghosts need to possess something to interact with the living world and etc etc etc the most logical thing to do is to possess my own body, since it's basically a statue of myself. And a little surprisingly, it actually fits like a glove. Like, since it's my body, it feels like stepping right back into place. So I get out of town and back to my herd, eventually. And that's where the trouble starts coming into it, because after I get settled again, I don't know how to explain to everyone else what feels so weird. Like since I can move my body and do everything I used to do, it's functionally the same, like nothing happened. Or it SHOULD be, so I don't know how to explain how it's NOT. But it's just hard to explain it to someone who's never been hit by a truck I guess

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I would really love a game about, uhm... the basic concept is playing enchanted weapons, and the people who bear them? Like, even if the human bearer dies, the weapon goes on, and you are playing the history of this item? does that make sense?

THEME: Enchanted Weapons

Hello friend! Have I got games for you!

Chronicles of the Lost Relic, by Worldmaker.

Everyone wants it, and most will try to take it. Yet, the Relic also seems to have a mind of its own. And it seems to be in control.

Chronicles of the Lost Relic is a fantasy journaling TTRPG about carrying a powerful relic.  You are the Relic Bearer, and you must complete your goal to bring balance to the world, or to satisfy your lust for power.

A weapon is just one of six different choices in Chronicles of the Lost Relic. You follow the story of this item over what could be hundreds or thousands of years, following it as it trades hands, enables quests, and may even corrupt things over time. From what I can gather, the game centres around the relic, but you as a player embody the people who wield it. As a result, you will likely find yourself picking up new characters over the course of play.

I think this mode of play can allow the solo player to not just build the legend of an item, but also a history of various heroes and villains, which could be a very rewarding experience.

Boyfriend Dungeon: Life on the Edge, by trumoi.

The cult classic shack-and-slash, in an all-new format. Boyfriend Dungeon: Life On the Edge is a tabletop roleplaying game that lets up to 4 players (plus their Master of Ceremonies) explore their inner psyche, confront their fears, and also smooch swords! Roleplay as your favorite lasersaber or make up your own weapon-person. Wield your friends, defeat your enemies, and level up your love… around the table.

Boyfriend Dungeon roots its mechanics in Powered by the Apocalypse rules, as well as Rhapsody of Blood, which takes a lot of inspiration from the game Legacy: Life Among the Ruins.

The NPC description on the store page reminds me of the antagonists in the Persona series - normal people whose actions or inner lives have turned them into monsters, who need to be fought in order for them to re-discover their humanity. I think that in this game each player embodies two forms: the wielder and the weapon.

If you want to explore the inner lives of spear, swords and axes - including their love lives - you might like Boyfriend Dungeon: Life on the Edge.

Artefact, by Jack Harrison.

ARTEFACT is a story game for one player, designed for contemplative solo play.

In the classic dungeon crawl, you follow the lives of adventurers as they overcome challenges to gain prestige and, most importantly, magical treasures. But what were those treasures doing before the adventurers came along? How many aeons have passed, in silent darkness, since they were last used?

ARTEFACT shifts the focus to the perspective of a single magical item, and its history as it passes through the hands of many different keepers. You’ll feel the weight of time as the item is lost or abandoned again and again, the dust & decay piling around it until it’s found again by someone new. There are many different magical items that you can follow across the span of generations in this game, but the two that will probably stand out to you are The Weapon and The Shield.

When you select an artifact to follow, you also choose a number of traits to describe it, and also draw the artefact to get a good idea of what it looks like. You’ll also have to answer a number o questions about the artifact, designed to fit the kind of item you choose. Then you’ll navigate the story of its life by filling out the keepers who held onto it, the time in between each keeper, and the actions that the item finds itself participating in, adding stories to its legend as time goes on.

If you want a solo exercise that can give depth to something that you might even want to drop into another campaign, you might be interested in Artefact!

You Are A Magic Sword, by beatingthebinary.

You are a magic sword, sleeping in your scabbard. Remember the hands that last wielded you, how they felt around you.

This is a business card game, and I think it feels more like a writing prompt than a fulll game. It falls in the family of sworddream games, which from what I can understand, is a movement that originated with in the OSR and similar spaces to invite diverse and passionate people into the space. According to the nine principles of *DREAM, these games value experimentation, anti-canon, emergent stories, generative worlds, non-violent play, and more.

You Are A Magic Sword invites you to create a story based off of a few small lines. I think it might be a good excuse for a writing exercise, or perhaps combined with some other small game-things to generate an interesting story.

Heartbearers, by Whimsy Machine.

It's a dangerous world of heroes and monsters. You play in pairs: a sentient weapon and their bearer. You go on thrilling adventures with other pairs. Be the greatest fighter pair through the ultimate feat of strength: making friends!

Long ago weapons realized that their bearers can get really hurt in battle, so culture shifted: the goal of combat changed to skillfully clash weapons, not harm bearers. Two weapons going head to head can show off their magic, abilities, and legends. Colors burst, sparks fly—it's intense!

Only half of the players in this game play as the weapons, as the game depends on relationships between the weapons and the people who wield them. While the interaction between weapon and bearer is largely a partnership, these partnerships can come in conflict with each-other, whether that be in the nature of some kind of rivalry, or perhaps a difference of opinion.

What’s interesting about Heartbearers to me is that the goal of the characters is to develop friendships with each-other, and the way the game centres that goal around combat. You don’t fight each-other out of a source of outright hostility - you fight to know each-other better, and get a better understanding of who your opponents are and what they want. Your characters are built up out of descriptive words as well as keywords, if you choose to play a weapon.

At the beginning of combat, weapons roll 2d12 and take the highest result as their points pool, with point expenditures allowing them to use special actions such as shifting form, casting magic, or highlight important moments the past. The Bearers of the weapons are authors of the reason behind the combat, and use the lower result of the die roll as their source of points, using those points to banter with each-other, declare personal opinions, or encourage their weapon in combat.

Other Notes

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[journeyinc]

Primogen Dottie, how do you respond to allegations that Toreador are just Socially Acceptable Malkavians?

Hello Journeyinc,

Unlike some members of my clan, I am not offended by comparison between Toreadors and Malkavians.

I remember a quote from Edgar Allen Poe that said, "There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the portion." Beauty comes from the unusual and extraordinary.

Toreadors have the sensitivity to appreciate beauty on the surface. Malkavians are simply more attuned what's going on under the surface. It's strange to me that Malkavians aren't appreciated for their unique abilities the way Toreadors are.

[journeyinc]

Gotta admit, any one of these would work on me.

Love me some burritos.

Source: could be worse comics