#i have too many npcs

[howgalling]

PART SIX!! it's great colour practice, transformers have so many deranged shapes. very fun

[marimbles]

being bad at video games is fun because it makes your character a uniquely stupid yet resilient and plucky sort of hero. an underdog no one would ever expect to win. so if you finally do it feels like slightly different and potentially funner version of the story. It’s like look, this idiot FINALLY beat the big bad guy! it took them 900 tries but by Jove they did it! WOOOOOO! GO IDIOT!!! YOU DID IT, BUD 👏 ⁽ᵉᵛᵉⁿᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ⁾

[echosong971]

“Mr. Handsome Idiot”

[snacobie]

I’m not explaining anything

[faceofodyssey]

[NPCS] the horne that is green

Wallace and Beatrice belong to @/justherefor000

[littlegoldfinchh]

why are people so upset about the ending of sote??? Like the base game hinted at miquella using his charms to manipulate people nfnd did ya really think that he was pure and innocent??

[longelk]

can I see your flight rising inscryption fandragons again pwetty pwease I neeeeed to see kaycee :3

🥺YEA YOU CAN!! I LOVE WHEN PPL INDULGE MY DRAGIN OBSESSION.............

heres my two kaycees, one dev one ghoul! :

the scrybes:

(fun fact, mags got spotlighted on a theme-week which is why he has so many more likes LOL. he hit 100 when i wasnt looking it seems :D)

i have,, SO many other npcs to post individually so ill leave the link to my lair LOL

certain dragons have received breed changes since i last posted them like amber and rebecha! :) all in all im still very very proud of all of these i love making fandragons so much!!!! i wanna make more art of my dergs too when i have time.......

[spell-fox]

I'm reading the VtM Dark Ages (v20) and all my love and support for GNC gangrels

[huldrabitch]

All the DA2 romances alsmost feel a bit unfullfilling to me, are there many others that prefer Hawke single with the subtext of an unspoken Varric thing?

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

Hey Pep, were you... stuck in your pizzeria? Couldn't you leave? How did you get ingredients for your pizzas?

Pep: "Hcum evael ot ekil t'ndid tsuj I, airezzip ym ni kcuts t'nsaw I."

Pep: "Yletelpmoc meht diova ot reisae tsuj saw ti os, thgis no dekcatta senolc rehto eht fo ynam tub, stneidergni teg ot semitemos tuo og ot evah did I."

Pep: "Deirrow tog llits I, enog saw I nehw meht hctaw ot Olleb dna Otrop detsurt I dna, sselpleh ton erew seno elttil eht elihw tub, airezzip ym morf yawa yats ot dednet yeht..."

Pep: "Deneppah ti nehw deticxe os syawla erew seno elttil eht tub, morf saw ti ohw erus ton ma I. Niaga dna won yreve stneidergni fo yreviled a teg osla did ew tub!"

Pep: "Ecalp eht dnuora saw revetahw pu gnikcip naht doof rehserf hcum. Oot saw I dna."

Pep: "Heh. Ydal ynnub ytterp eht, mhu... Ion... Mu... N... Hu ees d'I osla dna..."

Pep: "Emoh kcab ekat ot doof em evag dna ecin os syawla saw ehs dna, tol a reh ees d'I."

Pep: "Oot sgniht rehto emos dna azzip eht a-kooc ot elba saw I emit eht fo tsom os."

[puppyeared]

i think the reason why im so drawn to spirit tracks and pkmn scarvi is that having the legendary/princess as a companion rather than a goal that marks the games completion makes me feel satisfied the way i would after helping a friend

my brother always teases me about how I still havent finished botw after almost 7 years bc "id rather be out picking flowers" which i wont say is untrue. and yes i know Zeldas been holding off ganon for 100 years, yes i can get some sort of idea what her relationship with link was like by recalling memories and going through her diary. ive always loved botw for its unique storytelling and setting which makes it stand out, because it lets you get to know who you're saving.

but because theyre memories, it only works if theres something for the player to investigate that already happened. its retroactive (but effective nonetheless)

on the other hand, spirit tracks does something similar but instead of having the player try to piece together memories and interpret them as a spectator, you actually have an opportunity to get to know zelda yourself by talking to her and working together. besides making it a gameplay mechanic, giving the player control over how they interact with zelda makes it so much more personable.

and I find that making the goal feel personal instead of an obligation gives me more of a reason to work towards it. I know what kind of person botw zelda was but as the player, shes still very much a stranger to me. but spirit tracks zelda? thats my friend!!!! she invited me to go to the beach after we get her body back!!! i dont want to whip her to make her move faster thats mean :(

you know how hostage negotiators are trained to introduce themselves and get to know the person theyre negotiating with because its harder to hurt someone when you know what their favorite food is? its kinda like that, because it feels like im helping a friend than being told or led to do smth

and although i havent played scarvi myself, i feel an attachment to koraidon and miraidon even just watching playthrough clips because its like!! thats my weird scaly dog!! it loves sandwiches and we're friends!!! you know!!!!!!

[koszmarnybudyn]

Did I start another very detailed and probablly above my current skill level drawing? Yes. Will drawing lineart and coloring this be an absolute pain? Most probablly. But I am a masochist so I suppose I have to try.

[katartna]

Song of Frosted Light ❄️🕊️

[hannahhasafact]

It makes me really sad to hear Anthony had a hard time with this season of Dungeons and Daddies because of the reception from fans and stuff but I will not stand for his Legend of Korra slander how dare you

(Then again maybe I’m like the only person in the world who loves LoK more than Atla but that’s just me)

[yuukei-yikes]

i like drawing the yuukei quartet in cute outfits but i always have to put shintaro in some stupid shirt cuz he just wouldnt match their vibe