#backslider rpg

[spoonyruncible]

I'm not gatekeeping, I just have some gates and I've sort of vaguely known they're there, I haven't kept them and the hinges are so rusty i doubt they'd close if I tried. But, like, for ages all that came through those gates were stray geese and a dog I think belongs to a neighbor but might just belong to himself and of course there's the hunching afflicted wrathbeast. That's just having a garden. Things grow there and random folks stumble in sometimes, mispronounce the names of my favorite varietals, say stunningly inaccurate things about them, and wander bemusedly back out.

As a surprise to probably no one I was a deeply lonely child. No one really got me or what my deal was, so when I found something I loved it was mine and mine alone to treasure. As I got older I found other people who liked 'my' things. Some of those people were horrible! But there was a kinship and it was okay to be a bit horrible so long as we could be odd together. Gardens are resilient things, they tolerate mistakes and abuse. It's absolutely wonderful to share, to dance to the same music, that imperfection becomes part of the joy of it, becomes a unique thing unto itself.

So imagine my shock when there is a garden party that rapidly becomes a festival. No one has ever really been here before, it's been me and the geese and that one dog and a few other weirdos. Suddenly my things, things people beat me for loving, are things everyone loves. All at once the landscape is unrecognizable and if I acknowledge that then I'm being a hipster. I don't mind the festival, it's nice, now it's much easier to get things I need without having to put on my trekking gear and hike out to the one obscure location that has The Supplies. It's not bad, it's just weird. It feels like there is something wrong with me instead of something wrong about liking what I like.

I'm not really talking about one specific thing here, there have been a lot of these moments where what used to be unusual or even shameful is now the big thing. And it's good, it's can be great sometimes even with the unforeseen bizarre bad parts. But there is this selfish little part of me that wants to cling to my unloved love, to put a raggedy LP on a barely working record player and lay on the wooden floor of my childhood home staring at a painting of a ship in a storm that is right beside a picture of a young man in a cap and a too large jacket and listen to sea shanties belted out by people not very good at singing while I drift and drift and drift away on the sound and the whitecaps to a place where there is only this. I love the new versions like a drowning man loves air, I am happy that people have found this beautiful thing and can enjoy it, but there is a tinge to it I don't like. A prick of pain every time I see this joy over my joy, over my joy that I was punished for, humiliated for, shamed for. I'm glad people can love these things without suffering but it makes my suffering seem so fucking stupid.

There is a certain temptation, a bitter agony, that makes me want to hiss like an abused cat and cling jealous to my silly little toys. It's not that I want them all for myself, it's that I can't let go of that little kid with a bruisy eye sulking because no one wants to play with him. It's the whisper of, "We can be friends but only in secret. I don't want people to know I'm like you." It's the enthusiasm that rapidly becomes muted because the whole world is demanding to know why you can't just be normal for once. But that same temptation to lash out is the one that makes me reach out my hand instead, especially to people who are like, "Wow! I've never been to a garden before. I'm gonna screw this up. How do I not screw it up?" because now they're that bruisy eyed kid no one wants to play with. I can't protect the person I used to be by becoming the exact thing that hurt me. Gotta keep the gate open, gotta get used to new things even if it takes noise cancelling headphones and an entirely rational amount of backsliding, gotta wake up every day and keep trying even though the world keeps throwing curveballs that no sane person could anticipate. It's all okay. We're in this together and we're all gonna be okay,

[jennamoran]

If a strategist from Glitch were to try and go about killing a god (maybe they’ve backslided, maybe the god is just really annoying or trying to kill their friends), how would they go about doing it. What would be the best way to use Eide, Flore, Lore, or Wyrd?

-

Jenna, my readers are always asking me, how do you kill a god? But there is no one size fits all answer to killing gods.

You have to look within yourself.

You have to find the unique way of killing gods that expresses you.

-

Glitch is a game where you tell stories, and an important feature of stories about killing gods is that they are not all the same.

Some are long. Some short.

Some put their protagonists through heck. Some let them just glide through.

Stories can have very different ideas about what it takes, and what it means, to kill a god.

Gods, too, can differ.

-

If you're frustrated, looking at Glitch, trying to find the thing you're supposed to do to accomplish task X, you're misunderstanding the intended flow of play:

To kill a god, decide how you want to kill a god.

Then, express it in the form of actions.

Optionally, discover that you're misaligned with the group zeitgeist on how god-killing stories work, and adjust.

Then, the god dies, or doesn't.

If you're having trouble figuring out how you want to kill a god, then you might need to stick it on a back burner. Over time, you'll have a better understanding not just of the game options the traits provide but of how your character uses them, and some things your character might want to try will gain more dramatic weight in the group zeitgeist.

-

Decide you want to kill a god by shoving it out of your way into the street. Declare that as an everyday Ability action.

Decide you want to kill a god in a complicated flower rite. Declare that as a quest or planning miracle.

Chain it down in a place of sorrow with a Greater Invocation. Erase it with a handwave and your Wyrd. Give in to the wicked voice of your god-killing knife, that whispers to you always, and draw the curtain on the scene, and expect that when the next scene starts it will be dead.

Declare that gods aren't real, and let it poof away.

In every last case, perhaps the group goes, "Yeah, that's a satisfying answer!" Perhaps they don't. If they don't, then your action still "works," in that it happens unless in direct conflict with a stronger action, but it likely doesn't kill the god.

-

A secret is that this is not just how Glitch works.

In almost every RPG, the way you make something happen is get the group on board with that thing happening. All rules can do is help that happen.

If the rules of Glitch could make that happen then you wouldn't even have to read them, you wouldn't even have to know you were playing Glitch, you could think you were playing D&D and accidentally play Glitch instead and the rules would sort that out for you.

They can't.

-

When it comes to killing gods, the game of Glitch bestows a certain implicit authority on higher-level miracles, particularly epic miracles; miracles that take time to play out; miracles that imply in their description that they're on the right power level for killing gods.

Strategy and Greater Strategy are good ones when they apply, because you can get the players on board during the planning process, spend a while playing it out gathering narrative momentum, and then have it feel well-grounded when it works.

If you have a Talent for killing gods, then that probably works well, but also tends to reframe the game as one where you're killing a bunch of gods and more story time gets spent on the ones where there's a twist that makes it difficult. Think of the Traveller in Black; as competent as the traveller is, they still spend most of their time "in play" dealing with entities that are difficult even for them.

Greater Invocation is well-built for attacking gods.

Destruction and Greater Destruction can be good, though honestly they kind of push the GM to make a complex conflict out of it, which in turn means it's actually the Wailing Rite that would serve you best.

Flore is all kind of of one piece, but you'd definitely want to start with a Greater Glorification on a god-killing weapon.

-

If you decide in play to do something that the GM and group think you can probably do, but which they also think should feel difficult and earned, then you probably have to spend some time on either a quest or a spotlight-driven exploration of what's going on with that thing before coming up with a plan people think is cool, executing the plan, and then having the plan mostly work but devolve into some kind of chaotic complex conflict at the end to finish up the final details.

If you decide in play to kill a god ... well, probably the GM and group will believe you can, but also think it should feel difficult and earned. That's kind of what the book implies, at least.

-

In the old days---I once wrote this.

In the old days, they didn't know very much about the world. But they made maps anyway. If they had to map something they couldn't, they just drew whatever they felt like and wrote, "Here there be dragons."

We still don't know very much about the world; and there are things to map of it besides its surface.

How do you write a book?

How do you kill a god?

Can broken things be remade? Can destinies change? Is it worth the risk of hope?

Important questions, but one can only shrug, you see:

Here, there be dragons.

-

As for Glitch, I mean, like ... the game only has two rules, and they're not even a dozen words between them; some things had to be left as exercises for the reader, and the dreamer, and their group.

[bthump]

Would you say that Guts is tired of fighting and wants to settle down, or would you say that Guts has mellowed out because of the rpg group and if he gets the chance he'll go back to his old black swordsman era ways?

Love your blog btw pls marry me

Thank you!

Kinda both, in a way?

I think Guts wants to want to settle down lol. One of my takes on the take Casca to Elfhelm quest is that he thinks if he gets his girlfriend back he'll be able to move past his "obsession" with Griffith and live happily ever after. He has this hope that everything will fall into place and with Casca back he'll become the kind of person who can let go of the past and move on. Maybe it's not a fully conscious hope, but I think it makes sense as part of his motivation. It's why was restless and confused when Casca woke up but couldn't look at him ("the hell do I do now?") And it's why we got those little moments like Guts looking at Casca and moonlight baby wistfully.

But yeah I don't think that's how it works, I think that was always bound to fail, and Guts' backslide is inevitable, and would have been even if Casca could fuck him lol. I think Guts sublimates a lot of feelings into a single-minded pursuit of something - for a while it was revenge, and then for a while it was the Elfhelm goal, and now it's probably revenge again, with Berserk armour this time.

I fully anticipate him losing his shit very soon and going full Berserk armour mode in pursuit of Griffith, in parallel to Ganishka leveling up into Shiva when he had his little breakdown about not being able to fight Griffith.

[nenilein]

Firey, eway was actively and fully arguing in bad faith there. I've talked to eway about this exact topic before and they just 100% backslid on everything we talked about. By giving them an inch/benefit of the doubt, you are allowing your own reading of the text to become less coherent in the process.

A lot of this stems from the direction SEGA has taken Puyo Puyo these days. Obviously I'm not saying they're doing all bad, or that they're going strictly to child friendly, but these are some observations I've made. Whether they're true or not is up to interpret.

You're already so much better faith here than eway, tbh. Like, you're not arguing on the same level, you are actually trying to properly read the text as it exists and leave a margin for error.

SEGA has been going a bit more kid friendly with Puyo Puyo as of late, especially compared to the direction that Compile did. Let's comprae some; Compile's version of Puyo Puyo stems from their original dungeon crawler series, Madou Monogatari. This is not new news to most people, in fact it's very common knowledge. However, I'm bringing this up to display the tonal shift SEGA and Compile has. Madou Monogatari was an RPG dungeon crawler, it was gritty, it was gorey, it was less 'kid friendly' and more 'a kid could play this if they really wanted to'. In fact, the majority of Compile villains listed above where from Madou Monogatari games instead of ones released under the Puyo Puyo title.

That's not really true, though.

I've played all of the Madou games, most of them are extremely kid friendly (sometimes more so than the Sega games by a huge margin) and the only real "not child-friendly" stuff in them is in 90% of cases sexual jokes/content, not dark storytelling or gore.

The PC 98 ports of Madou 1-2-3 are extreme outliers that were so badly received by the games' fanbase in Japan that Compile immediately backtracked on them and went back to cutesy art and kid-friendly text pretty much permanently. There's an actual interview in a compile magazine about this that I should probably translate at some point. The idea that Sega Puyo is "more kid-friendly" is something of an urban legend that exists solely due to people seeing screenshots of the PC 98 Madou 1-2-3 ports and misreading them as the norm.

The Count was a villain in Madou Monogatari R. Runelord was a villain in Madou Monogatari S. Yoggus was a villain in Madou Monogatari (Saturn). I sure this doesn't need to be pointed out, but Compile kept a lot of their more irredeemable villains in their Madou Monogatari series. One exception to this is Doppelganger Arle. Doppelganger Arle, while she originally appears as a doppel through the Madou series, a trait not strictly bound to Arle as Schezo also encounters doppels, has her most prominent appearance in a Puyo Puyo title.

That is *PARTIALLY* true, but it's not because Madou Monogatari is "darker", it's because Madou Monogatari doesn't have a need for a large recurring cast, because most of the characters are just mook encounters. All the villains that aren't "redeemed" as Eway calls it (that verbage is so loaded, I dislike it immensely tbh) are characters who never appear again and aren't actual "characters" so much as obstacles for Arle, Rulue, Schezo and Ragnus to smack down. They're glorified natural disasters, basically.

Sega Puyo, on the other hand, wants to keep guys around, so they need to be more interesting and have more depth than "this thing that we cast Jugem on reaaaaaally hard that one time".

Like, think about it, do we care about Runelord in isolation? No, we care about what he MEANS to Schezo's ongoing character development and how his presence ties into the latest developments, such as the bunch of stuff that happened with Schezo in Puzzle Pop.

Does anybody ever draw/write anything about the Count or Yoggus? I drew a SINGLE Yoggus-related commission once for a person I'm not even in contact with anymore, and even that was more of an OC than the actual monster from Madou Saturn.

These 1-time obstacles just aren't characters. They're facilitators. That's a big distinction.

Doppelganger Arle appears as the overarching villain in Puyo Puyo~N (Puyo Puyo 4), and while the non canon light novels give her a more tragic backstory, she doesn't have a concrete one in Puyon. She's simply a scary villain, and she does a good job at it. Due to her ties with being a Puyo character, this means SEGA can use her as they please.

This is also a misunderstanding. Doppel's "backstory" isn't in any of the non canon lightnovels either. It's in a blog post made by a former Compile writer in the early 2010s, of which the original isn't even online anymore, because the social media said blog was on shut down. So in the Compile era, people didn't even KNOW that writer had that headcanon, because it wasn't out there. So this isn't even a Compile era thing, this is a "a single writer had an idea he never used" thing.

As SEGA has taken over, such things have been watered down to make it easier to digest for children.

Uhh, that's not really true either. What Sega did was make the characters more *consistent*

Compile had a HUGE issue where the franchise had no series bible, to the point every single writer would write every single character differently. Even some of the Puyo Puyo Tsuu manuals made FUN of that by pointing out how Arle's character and lore are insanely inconsistent and wondering if that means there's multiple of her running around. So a lot of "traits" people think the characters had in Compile are traits they only had for a single game, then never again, and that directly contradicted what came before/after. This extends across all of Madou and Puyo (and Nazo Puyo)

When Sega came around, the writers there immediately started "clean up" by solidifying what each character is and isn't in a series bible, as is standard in the entertainment industry for any sort of narrative media. So if any traits you have seen anywhere in Compile Madou/Puyo is absent, it's because that trait didn't make the cut for the series bible during the clean-up phase, which served to make everything consistent and coherent.

But, it's also rather frustrating when you want to see an evil villain. SEGA is, of course, capable of doing such a thing, but at the end of the day they do need to make money, and it's easy to make money off kids games.

This is really a bit of a misunderstanding of how Puyo is marketed. It's really not a kids game (in fact, Quest has a disclaimer that you should only play it under the age of 14 under the supervision of an adult, because, it's, well, a gacha game, and gacha games are not made for kids at all), but a "nostalgia bait" game, aimed at millenials primarily. Kids are actually just a SUB-SECTION of Puyo's market, which, yes, Sega is happy to get into the fold to, but are not the primary focus. The primary focus are millenials who grew up with Madou/Puyo in the 90s, which is heavily reflected in the merchandising and the character polls. There's a reason why Arle, Schezo, Witch and Draco dominate the polls and merch the way they do.

The reason we don't get Madou 95 type stuff anymore is, again, as I said above, there was a HUGE backlash against Madou 95 back in the 90s. This is NOT what the Japanese fans want. They want cute slice of life shit with these characters, and they want jokes. I actually had a discussion about that with a Japanese fan a week or so ago, where said fan outright said they don't WANT Puyo to go harder on the lore, because it would ruin so many fandom-wide headcanons, it would be more of a hindrance than a help.

Puyo/Madou was never perceived as a plot-heavy franchise by Japanese fans, and plot-heavy installments always tended to be far less popular than plot-light, which makes it a miracle modern Puyo goes as plot heavy as it does and is a testimony to how much the writers care about writing plots with these characters. Back in the compile days, the most plot heavy entries in the series, such as Saturn Madou, tended to be sales failures that contributed to Compile's bankruptcy. The primary reason why Madou Saturn is such a rare game these days is because it sold very poorly.

I'm not well versed in Aya and Klug's lore, though I know the basics. I'd be delighted to see Aya stay irredeemable, or at the very least difficult to sympathize with. We'll just have to hope I suppose.

And, as I said in my response to eway, this is just eway completely misreading the contents of all the games.

Aya was never portrayed as "evil".

Fever 2, from the very beginning, made it outright clear they are just a desperate victim of racism that stole their life away and that their ruthless actions are a result of wanting that life back, not of "evil".

Thanks for being such a level-headed person in discussing this, but I kinda feel you gave too much effort here... and so am I. >_>

Neni out.

I am getting sick of the redeemable/not really evil villains. Yes I do like them but there's just so many now! It was far more varied in Compile!

[Post this and I will reblog with my rant about this subject]

shit, sorry I didn't post earlier. Yap away. Or... yap eway...?

[backslider-rpg-blog]

Moodboard nº10

[rivverlethe]

.

[quidcumque]

GRAVEYARD KEEPER: FIRST THOUGHTS

I heard it compared to Stardew Valley and aside from the silly title screen, it's definitely visually there. Play through? There are a hell of a lot of cons, but they won't keep me from playing it

Con: no character customization, no choices at all. You ARE a heterosexual white male-presenting protagonist with a female-presenting white sweetheart. Any headcannon re either of you being 🏳️‍⚧️ remains headcannon

Hilarious: you are reading a text from your sweetheart when crossing a road and you get hit by a car. Keep track of your surroundings, kids

Con: the dialog writing starts out real clumsy. You do eventually get choices, but I prefer how SV makes you the strong silent type when you're not actively involved

WHICH REMINDS ME, CON: don't let the dialog bubbles cycle on their own without me clicking??? I missed so much unretrievable info because I was mulling over the first half smh

Plot: she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed the fly, maybe she died crossing the street and woke up in a shitty little medieval FLAT EARTHER village and she has to rube goldburg her way to and through a magic portal to get back to her sweetheart. Or something.

Pro: I don't play rpgs much so while I don't prefer this style over sv's do-whatever-and-you'll-suck-less-as-you-go gameplay, it's pretty awesome in and off itself BECAUSE it's so different. It also contributes heavily to the swallowed-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly effect because it's got EIGHT TABS OF TECH TREES and I started drawing graphs

Pro: you're on a derelict homestead/graveyard with a familiar need to clear rocks/trees/stuff and bring the area back to life. BUT doing things gives you different xp/knowledge points which is how you advance on the tech trees, so it's different from just a carbon copy SV feel

Con: Jesús Christ you can tell this was made by a dude. So was SV, but where it had nearly equal gender ratios (plus the aforementioned character choices), I've seen... not very many women thus far, and what we get is not exactly impressive. I have no problems with "ms charm" telling me to fuck off until I deserved to talk to her, as half the men I met said the same. But I've met two wives thus far, and uhhhhhhhhhhh one is straight up called sweet but stupid in her bio and the other opens EVERY SINGLE DIALOG with "you should talk to my husband, he's in charge" like jfc lady you're the one I need for recipes, calm down? Does he beat you? What the hell?

Con: let's set aside that I'm pretty sure the "medieval idiots thought world flat" thing has been debunked, because I found info but it didn't have good citations. Also maybe we're going for parody over historically accurate, fine whatever. But whyyyyyyyyyy do you have a guy named "G*psy Traveler" like I know I have an inflated sense of how widely it's known that that's a slur, but it on top of the flat earth thing and the WOW that's bad female-or-anything representation, it builds an image of the creator/creators as the really stereotypical basement dwelling head-up-ass dudes who have never ever looked outside their zone and never ever want to

Pro: like two steps into the tutorial you're slapped in the face with Soilent Green is People and you just live with that

Hilarious: I can tell when I have a first conversation with somebody I was supposed to have met already, because my pre-scripted side of the conversation suddenly backslides in terms of my acceptance of the situation

Pro: time is an illusion and represented only by the cycle of emoji-labeled days. Weeks are not counted, so I legitimately have no clue how many "weeks" I went through last night

Unsure??? I don't know how much I'm going to have to drink the church koolaid to progress? I saw an indication up the tech tree that suggested my good/evil choices MIGHT matter, but I've got no idea how. I told the inquisitor who'd just BURNED A PEOPLE ALIVE IN FRONT OF ME that sure I'd be his friend, and I don't know if the game allows for that to have been a choice made out of the fear that I'd be burned next if I said no

Pro: I still want to play it. The myriad cons will influence how I talk about it to my friends, but it's still giving me dopamine, and that's good enough

[iztopher]

4, 8, and/or 20 of RPG Maker Dev asks!

thank you!!! :D

4. Which RM engine do you use/prefer? RMXP my beloved. I pretty much exclusively use XP

8. What is your opinion of RPG Maker? I love it!!! Definitely not without its flaws, there's a lot I'd like to see it improve on or stop backsliding on, but I think it's a really helpful, cool series of programs that is well designed for making my absolute favorite type of games. Pretty much every time I play a non-RPG maker game I find that the things that would make me like it more (not necessarily that it should change, just personal preferences) are things that would line up if it was made through RPG Maker

20. What is your current project about? I have two projects right now! I'm working with Tei and Ji on finishing Build B of Inn Need, and my personal project is away in the woods!

Inn Need is about an old witch who buys the inn she used to visit in her childhood, fixing it up and helping the ghosts of the employees who haunt it. Build B is cleaning up some fixes we didn't have the chance to do because of game jam time limits, and a couple key features, mainly more interactivity >:3c

away in the woods is a game about a woman who lives alone in the woods! the player spends three days in her shoes, each 25 years apart, exploring the woods as they change over time and shaping the woman's reputation based on how she interacts with the woods and the people she meets in them.

[descentintodarknessvtm]

WHY ANDY?

I think it’s a tradition in the long history of RPGs and the interwebz to use the pictures of celebrities of all kinds as character reference pics. Seriously, since Usenet, I can remember pictures of actors, musicians, characters of all kinds being used as a portrait from someone’s character. Even when slash fiction was spreading across the internet like a metastasizing cancer, it wasn’t uncommon for authors to load up whatever edition of Corel they had at the time to cobble together images of Kirk and Spock in an airbrushed romance. So why not continue that dubious tradition? I mean, there’s so many great look people out there to base the look of your character on and they’re all floating around in one format or another. All you have to do is click once, twice maybe, and if you’re feeling ambitious run it through Photoshop and you have an instant portrait.  

I won’t lie, I got a lot of inspiration for Johnny Walker from the movie American Satan, which by the way I really enjoyed and if you haven’t seen it it’s great inspiration for Vampire the Masquerade. The main character is played by Andy Biersack and while his singing voice is dubbed over in the film the character’s look is 100% Andy. It only made sense to use Andy’s likeness for Johnny and when you put together the fact that Johnny is Toreador, and not just Toreador but a poseur Toreador, one who is extremely charismatic, it all falls into place. I’m not one of those gay men who insists that all straight men have a tendency to backslide into adolescent boycrush phases, but I find it pretty inconceivable that even the “straightest” man alive would take one look at Andy not think “yeah he’s pretty hot.” But that’s just me.

When you take into account those cheekbones chiseled on a feline face, the ectomorphic body type that is all the rage right now and the deep voice that you know goes along with the whole package, this is contemporary beauty standards full on and the leather jacket, pins, hardware, face metal, and hipster hair makes it all come together in a way that projects some of the best elements of post-punk/goth aesthetic without being horribly dated. Johnny is a childe of the modern nights, not a washed out goth rocker lamenting that he never had the success of Peter Murphy. I think that aesthetic is big part of Vampire. I’m not sure about 5th edition as I think the book and authors have strayed pretty far from the original vision, but the goth-punk element is critical to the overall feel of Vampire and in previous editions that was pushed hard not just by the developers but the artwork, suggested ready, and suggested listening.

I’m somewhat shamed to have to admit that I never heard of Andy until I saw American Satan. It’s true. I had never really heard of Black Veil Brides either and remembered vaguely seeing a t-shirt for the band on a window display as I passed by a Hot Topic. So of course in developing Johnny Walker I put on some BVB to hear what their sound is all about. I have to say that Andy can sing fairly well, he’s got that deep voice with a lot of hit behind it and when you realize it’s coming from a carnation it makes it all that more impressive in my opinion. So we have the look, the voice, the charisma, it all ties into the other and so when I try to think of someone other than Andy Biersack as resembling Johnny Walker, I just draw a blank.

I’ll be uploading some more info on Johnny as well as his character sheet soon, so stay tuned.

Take care folks.

[thelearnedsoldiertoo]

Quick rundown off the top of my head, BTW;

The Player Character can be p. much anyone you want in most of these games(to an extent, obvs.), gay, lesbian, bi, pan, ace, etc.

KotOR has Juhani as a lesbian and that's it, unfortunately.

ME1 has Liara, who's bi, and, again, unfortunately that's it.

DA:O Zevran and Leliana are both bisexual, as is Isabela, who makes a brief pre-DA2 cameo and can be briefly romanced. For non-romanceable NPCs, Wade and Herren(the Denerim blacksmiths) are an adorable gay couple.

ME2 is arguably a backslide but iirc they were made about the same time--this and DAO--without cross-pollination, and the game itself is already pretty great. Only LGBT romance rep is Kelly Chambers, who is bi, and Liara, who returns for the lair of the shadow broker DLC and continues the romance from ME1 if it exists.

DA2 has the return of a couple characters from DAO like Zevran for cameos, but for romance options literally all of them are canon Bi(Isabela, Merrill, Anders, and Fenris), except Sebastian, who's het.

ME3 has Steve Cortez, who is gay, Samantha Traynor, who is a lesbian, Diana Allers, who is bisexual, the return of both Liara and Kelly's romances(Liara's becomes extremely poignant in this game), and Kaidan Alenko, who was not previously romanceable by a male Shepard but now is. It also has too many LGBT background characters to count and does an EXCELLENT job of providing normalisation for them--they are not remarked upon, they simply are. Special mention in this last category goes to the human marine looking to contact her alien wife for the sake of their daughter--who because of alien weirdness is both of their biological offspring.

Star Wars: The Old Republic actually came out earlier but I waited to mention because it launched with similar rep to ME1 or ME2--that is to say, very little. As an MMO, however(don't freak out, it's grind-free and every bit as story-driven as their other RPGs, you just play it with other people), it's been updated and expanded constantly and what started as token lip-service has become several fully-romanceable characters; Lana Beniko, Theron Shan, Jaesa Willsaam, and Koth Vortena are all bisexual. There are two brief romances in Rise of the Hutt Cartel in Lord Cytharat(gay man) and Lemda Avesta(bisexual woman), though their romances do not get a lot of attention in-game.

They really came into their own in terms of rep with Dragon Age Inquisition, which has so many casually LGBT characters I'm just going to list the romances--you'll have to find the rest for yourself. Josephine Montilyet is bisexual, Leliana is back but unfortunately not romanceable(though if your Warden in DAO romanced her it's stated that their romance continued over the years), Sera is a lesbian, Dorian Pavus is a gay man, and Iron Bull is bisexual.

Their latest entry, Mass Effect: Andromeda was...lacklustre as a game but continued Inquisition's trend. Gil Brodie is gay, Dr. Suvi Anwar is a lesbian, Pelessaria B'Sayle("Peebee") is bisexual, as are Jaal Ama Darav, Vetra Nyx, Reyes Vidal, and Keri T'Vessa.

I haven't played all of their games and my memory is not encyclopaedic(I had to resort to google a couple times for full names), so if I missed any or there are any NPCs or similar worthy of an honourable mention, or if you know of any other games with good LGBT rep/romance, feel free to reply with them--the entire point of this post is to help people burned out by Ubi's BS to find a new home to let their gay hearts run free. ^-^

For everyone disappointed in the news about AC: Odyssey, I should point out that BioWare has a pretty consistent track record with LGBT rep. Their earlier games weren’t as great on it(KotOR has only one wlw option and no mlm), but they’ve been making genuine strides and their wlw and mlm romances in DA and the later ME games are some of the best in gaming–I still regularly go back to romance Leliana, Isabela, Liara, Josephine, Sera, Lana, Juhani, and Merrill, and I’ve even actually done het ships and enjoyed them(despite being a raging lesbian) because they write their men extremely well–vulnerable, emotional, and human, rather than the emotionless blobs that stand in for human beings in most games. The games themselves are almost always excellent and well-made(with a couple *ahem* notable exceptions), and I’d recommend them even without the quality romance options(all of which you get to CANONICALLY STAY WITH IN THE EPILOGUES AND EVEN ACROSS GAMES[DA and ME have savegame imports on the same console that remember romance options and similar]), so I really can’t recommend them enough.

I’m sure a lot of you guys who read this are gonna already know about these, but I guarantee you there are young kids and teens for whom Odyssey was the first game they saw themselves in, or even older LGBT people who haven’t tried these games yet, and this is for them. If this inspires you to give them a re-play as well(I’m waist-deep in DA2 and an Isabela romance for the zillionth time), then so much the better.

Anyway, hearing about the crap that happened and the shit going on in the world, latching onto a company like BioWare that not only makes consistently excellent games but includes consistently excellent representation and romance is honestly more and more important by the day.

[bthump]

If you could end berserk with either griffith and guts killing each other or guts joining griffith, which one would you choose? There's romance and poetry in both scenarios

Yeah ia, either would be great. Honestly this is tricky lol. I mean if it was fic I think I’d say Guts not exactly joining Griffith but taking off together with him. Guts has gone berserker and murdered his rpg group and lost his revenge boner bc he’s in no place to judge anymore. Griff upon being made undeniably aware that his feelings still exist goes for broke, knowing how hard he fucked himself last time, and decides to just embrace it this time. God told him he can do whatever he wants, and this is what he actually wants.

So if Guts is at his side he can go ‘ok I’ve achieved my dream and now I can do something else’ and hand the utopia off to Charlotte. I’m sure there’s a handwavy explanation for the apostles not turning on everyone once he leaves. Maybe they only need his presence anywhere in the world to be good.

So Griff meets Guts somewhere and is like ‘hey so I lied that time on the hill of swords‘ and Guts is like fuck it this might as well happen, and they go off into the dragon-filled world to be monstery humans or humany monsters together.

BUTTTTT I don’t think I would actually choose that as the canon ending, because like... idk, I really want them to kill each other lol. I mean maybe if I had total creative control in this hypothetical I might go with it. But if this is a hypothetical where Miura’s writing it and I’m just picking the direction for the ending to go, then I’d definitely opt for both of them killing each other.

Like I think it’s where the story was going, and it’s an ending I really did want to see Miura write. It could be really satisfying thematically and on a character level, it could bring a lot of things full circle, and ultimately I think the most appropriate way for Guts’ story to end is with his death. He’s been living his life by throwing himself into mortal danger and fighting his way out by the skin of his teeth, ie death-seeking, so imo his two narratively-fulfilling options are to grow out of that by addressing his issues and becoming emotionally healthier, and settle down to live a quiet domestic life, or to finally throw himself into danger he can’t struggle his way out from and “die smiling.” The former is pretty much out of the question because we know Guts was going to backslide thanks to mountains of foreshadowing and also I don’t want it anyway because it would necessarily mean getting over Griffith.

And I think having Griffith focused on him and seeing a glimpse of his not actually frozen love would be just the thing to get him to die with a smile on his face - tho ofc it would also be a tragic death, like there would have to be a strong sense of regret and lost chances etc too imo.

And it just feels right for them to have one last brief glimpse of their emotional connection before dying. Like, at least for me, the ending where they get back together raises too many questions about how the fuck they exist in relation to each other now. I like the idea of ending with them going off together, but I can’t imagine what that would look like day to day lol. Same with Guts joining him in Falconia or whatever, it’s like... awkward to think about to me, yk? I like the conclusiveness of them dying a little better, I think.

[rolhispano]

estoy en backslider-rpg*foroactivo*com y considero que es uno de los foros más activos en los que he estado nunca, sobretodo entre semana, por si le sirve al anon impaciente ;P

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Gracias por la recomendación.

- Orfeo

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Sadie M. Langley

Odiaba recordar, odiaba volver la mirada hacia atrás — ¿Qué haces aquí? — fue todo lo que dijo. Poco más de lo que se merecía.

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Livia D. Fairchild

Un mes. Había pasado un mes pero la herida escocía como si no hubiera pasado ni un mísero día.

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OBITUARY

Búsqueda de hermanos (+tramas)

Kozlow es sinónimo de peligro. Sois algo así como los Peaky Blinders versión polaca y sí, tenéis raíces gitanas. Vuestra mala fama es bien merecida, aunque en el barrio hablan maravillas de vosotros porque saben que sois personas que movéis bastante mercancía y porque tenéis algún que otro contacto interesante. Os suelen definir como gente turbia, gente que no se anda con jueguecitos y, además, sois muchos. No sólo sois cuatro hermanos dando por saco constantemente, sino que han llegado más familiares (tíos, primos...) que viven en el mismo edificio que vosotros y que se dedican a los mismos negocios a los cuales se ha dedicado vuestra prestigiosa familia durante años.

+ detalles

CITY OF STARS

Búsqueda (Masc. — + 25 años — Grupo indif.) + tramas

Bianca tiene novio y este personaje es ese, claro que sí. Su pareja, la persona a la que debe de amar más que a nadie en su vida. Su compañero de batallas. Llevan juntos casi cuatro años y desde siempre ha parecido que la cosa iba en serio, bueno, hace unos meses atrás lo parecía más que ahora.

X y Bianca tienen problemas que no saben solucionar. Ya no sólo los celos que hay entre la pareja en general que están aumentando sin sentido si no también el hecho de que empiezan a no entenderse, a enfadarse por todo y a que al uno le moleste cualquier cosa y viceversa. Lo intentan, intentan arreglarlo pero un día están bien y al otro duermen separados una vez más.

+ detalles

HE SHOT ME DOWN

Búsqueda (Masc. — +27 años — Irlandés)

El problema de los Collins vino cuando la separación y el consecutivo divorcio destrozase la imagen de familia feliz.

No importó la edad que tuviesen los chicos, las responsabilidades de Patrick se incrementaron de manera exponencial. Recogían los botellines que quedaban esparcidos por la casa, iban a buscar a su padre al bar después de las llamadas de los dueños y procuraban que no se ahogase en su propio vómito. Hunter era el mayor, quién creyó que debía hacerse cargo, y se presentaba en el trabajo de Patrick. Esperó que su hermano Ronan comprendiese el sacrificio que estaba haciendo y fue por eso que lo repudió cuando lo vio marchar a los dieciocho años.

+ detalles

ABSINTHE

Búsqueda (Masc. — +24 años — Consumidores) + tramas

Y Jill notó el cambio. Él ya no era el mismo chico que conoció, la sonrisa rápida y despreocupada escaseaba. Las ojeras marcaron su rostro, y el enfado remplazó el gesto amistoso cuando Jill le dijo ya no más. No más ASH para él, no de su parte. Si no iba a ayudarlo, tampoco sería partícipe de su destrucción. Dejaron de hablar varias semanas, hasta que él volvió a llamarla. —No es por negocios, lo juro. Mentía. Necesitaba más droga, y Jill se la dio. El chico es su punto débil, le gusta, sí. Y es lo que tanto temía, lo que buscaba evitar. Mantienen una relación tóxica desde ambos lados. Ella no sabe hasta qué punto le agrada, - ¿o sólo la usa?- y él no ha podido conseguir a alguien más que lo ayude.

+ detalles

SCREWS FALL OUT ALL THE TIME

Búsqueda (Fem. — 20/21 años — No consumidores)

A medida que la vida de Logan iba en picada, X no entendía qué pasaba con él ni con su familia. Inocente, o demasiado inteligente como para prestar atención, siguió con su camino. Puede que haya sido una alumna modelo como una más del montón, pero sí me gustaría que destacase en el mundo de las artes (música, danza, pintura, lo que prefieras). Sus padres le aplaudieron de pie mientras dejaban marchar al primogénito.

Búsqueda (X: Masc. Y: Fem.)

Tres desconocidos que comparten el gusto por el dinero fácil.

Fueron tres meses los que se mantuvo al margen ideando cómo volver al mercado de la metanfetamina. Hasta que conoció a X y supo que estaban frente a algo más grande. X es su nuevo proveedor, acaba de llegar a Belfast y su mercancía está a otro nivel. El problema fue que entre los dos no hacían uno. La llegada de Y, conocida de la infancia de Logan, terminó siendo el impulso que necesitaban.

+ detalles

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Información: Reservas.

Finalmente tenemos horario para las reservas de pb. Se podrán realizar a partir de mañana día 17.02.17 en el siguiente horario:

España: 14:00 hrs. (GMT+1)

Canarias: 13:00 hrs (GMT)

Argentina, Chile y Uruguay: 10:00 hrs. (GMT-3)

México: 07:00 hrs (GMT-6)

Para reservar el pb debéis indicar: PB + Usuario + Contraseña. Advertimos que todo aquel que no envíe los tres datos no será tomado en cuenta.

Por último avisamos que el número máximo de reservas por persona es de tres avatares (el propio + 2 reservas ajenas)