gorillastraylight

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[neolithic hottie who's been easing back into the modern dating scene]: so when he said he was a pot caster i thought he was a good artisan with a reliable income. But turns out he just talks to himself all day mostly. People don't even come to listen and he doesn't know shit about ceramics. Sometimes one of his friends is there though.

[One eyed priest-king who's been frozen in the ice for 10 000 years next to a mammoth but is starting to thaw]: girl no wayyyyy. What is slip casting a pot btw. The use of that technique (not to be confused with slipware) purportedly only dates back to the Tang Era (618–917).

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I love how it’s implied to be canon that other mercenaries will meet Grayson Carlyle and be like “uh huh, sure man, Grayson Death Carlyle, that’s *definitely* your real name”. Like imagine how common it must be for merc commanders to adopt pseudonyms or change their names to something cool and scary, and this guy just actually has the middle name “death” bc some ancestor decided it would be cool to change the pronunciation from deeth or dee-ath or something else recognizably Gaelic. Idk, something about imagining Gray having to like feebly insist that No, It’s My Real Name! To some new recruit or colleague who’s like winking and nodding along tickles me

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I love how it’s implied to be canon that other mercenaries will meet Grayson Carlyle and be like “uh huh, sure man, Grayson Death Carlyle, that’s *definitely* your real name”. Like imagine how common it must be for merc commanders to adopt pseudonyms or change their names to something cool and scary, and this guy just actually has the middle name “death” bc some ancestor decided it would be cool to change the pronunciation from deeth or dee-ath or something else recognizably Gaelic. Idk, something about imagining Gray having to like feebly insist that No, It’s My Real Name! To some new recruit or colleague who’s like winking and nodding along tickles me

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Thanks for the tag :)

Favourite Colour: I tend to like earth tones, so like dull red or clay orange

Last song: “Best Revenge” by PUP

Currently Reading: a couple, “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott and “Mercenary’s Star” by William Keith Jr

Currently Watching: uhhhh I guess Lupin III pt 2? Also Succession

Craving: Also Gyoza, but like with some rice and broccoli

Coffee or Tea: usually coffee but I fw Chai heavy

@frogblast-the-ventcore @pawseds

GET TO KNOW YOUR MUTUALS!

Rules: answer and tag six people you want to know better

Thankyou for the tag @nossumusstellae !!

1. Favourite colour: don't have one, but I hate all the warm colours.

2. Last Song : power trip by LEAP

3. Currently reading : picked up Hamlet a few days ago, still waiting on Katabasis

4. Currently watching: my comfort show modern family

5. Craving: Biryani. with raita. And chutney.

6. Coffee or Tea : coffee definitely

Tagging : @magicaldestinyharmony @elleldoe @nixie-writes-and-reblogs @xmads-omensx @twistedlimefire @alikhawrites

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Ok this one’s fun, I love how the “basic” mech takes inspiration from the Hunchback (or so it seems to me), the most “neurosuite? hormone Iv? Handler? I just wanna foray for Blake’ sake” battlemech

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"Well, off to visit your parent!" - The Sbi

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D&D players are the USAmericans of TTRPG players <- a statement that makes perfect sense if you have the eyes to see

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Man ok maybe running a 40k rpg would in fact be fun

Rogue Trader and his First Mate void master accompanied by a boarding party

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Death’s Consorts: Hunchback

At long last, my first poll’s worth of Battlemechs is finished. This Hunchback and indeed all my planned Death’s Consorts pirate ‘mechs have been a conundrum for me for some time, mostly in terms of getting the base grey/white correct and having black details that don’t look like blobby dogshit. VERY pleased with how this guy turned out.

I love the CGL Hunchback design, it maintains the beefy and aggressive look of the Hunchie without being comically top-heavy (like the PG version does to me). I’m not really sold on the louvered cockpit, but it sure looks nice when you hit it with red contrast paint! The black stripes on the head and chest almost remind me of a gimp harness or other bondage gear, which is fitting for a mad max vibe (and also bc Lady Death is extremely domme-coded), and it ended up being a happy accident that I decided to put Xs on the shins, which immediately suggested using the knees for a skull-and-crossbones. I’m finally excited to keep working on my pirates instead of dreading it :)

Gonna take a quick break to work on my first Jade Falcon, a Mad Dog, before jumping into my next set of poll mechs: a Rasalhague Cyclops! Until then, remember: take all you can, and give nothing back!

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Yeah, it’s a bit strange that ICON carries that idea over a bit from Lancer and even makes the divide starker. In Lancer, there’s at least a diegetic reason as to why combat is so utterly different from the rest of the game: you’re either in a giant robot, or you aren’t. Additionally, your pilot can take damage in or out of combat similar to 4e (though it’s going to be fairly rare for the pilot to take damage in mech combat, usually that means you’re just dead). In ICON, you’re still the same guy in or out of a fight, but for some reason those are totally different modes.

There is an unfortunate tendency to think of RPGs as basically having "the rules stuff" and "the narrative content" and never the two shall meet, and while this is something that is easy to just blame D&D 5e on (like, more so than any of its predecessors, D&D 5e very much is a combat system plus a universal resolution engine that provides the DM with very little guidance beyond "ask for a check and make something up.") it's absolutely not exclusive to D&D 5e.

This is another unfortunate outgrowth of the fluff/crunch, roleplaying/rollplaying, fiction/mechanics dichotomies that people keep pushing and unfortunately people who don't examine the biases built into this rhetoric end up producing extremely unopinionated game design. If you've internalized the idea that RPGs can be divided into the rules stuff (which usually means procedural combat scenes) and then the actual narrative stuff (which people always falsely assume to mean "single roll resolution acting as an improv prompt") and end up taking that into their own designs. Well, there's a reason why so many Baby's First "Narrative" RPGs just end up being essentially like "what if you built an entire game system out of asking for ability checks and then doing improv based on the results of those checks." Basically replicating D&D 5e's exact non-combat structure but because the game doesn't have an actual combat engine it's actually "story-focused" now. But without any actual structure built under those mechanics it'll still be the GM who has to hold the thing together, and arguably their job is now harder because they don't even have a combat engine to fall back on.

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There are, in fact, strange things done in the midnight sun

The White Vault…The Terror…The Pale Beyond…why am I Big into doomed polar expedition media lately. Anyone else up feeling the sirens call of the arctic

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This movie is an insane weapon to pull out in Cine2nerdle. Neither the layman nor the frequenter of film Reddit have seen it, but absolutely fucking everyone’s in it

If this shit happened to me as a teen I wouldn't give a fuck what anyone thought. Nobody would be able to fuck with me

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I love Blades in the Dark. I like how its dice pool works. I do not love having to rationalize “complications” from player die rolls constantly - like it’s not a huge deal, but all the little expenditures add up and get exhausting. I *want* complications to be interesting and change the situation, not just be a point or two of stress - but after two hours in a session, that’s what’s gonna start happening. Just like, a page or two of tables to offload a little of the work might have been nice

If we're being 100% honest with ourselves as game designers, we've gotta admit that this notion that "story focus" means making the GM do all the work is not a bugbear that's unique to the Dungeons & Dragons fandom. Think of how many self-identified "story focused" indie RPGs you've bumped into that have a great deal to say leading up to the point of rolling the dice, but once the dice have actually been rolled and the time has come to interpret what those results actually mean, those same rules that were so keen on procedural rigour just moments ago simply shrug and go "I dunno, have the GM make something up?"

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They say that between gunshot and throne-room floor, Cameron saw everything that was to come- and his final breath left as a scream of terror.

Song for Three Soldiers, by Stephen Vincent Benet.