#post-game making good on that promise

[buckynats]

Each day, you'd rise with me / Know that I would gladly be / The Icarus to your certainty / Oh, my sunlight, sunlight, sunlight

[rubyfunkey]

The Rehabilitation of Death by @bamsara

didnt have time to clean this like i wanted but i needed to get this scene out of my head desperately. im good now

[remxedmoon]

(you worked yourself to death.)

yeah i wasn’t kidding when i said these would be coming soon. <- haha funny joke marshall. so!! remember when i said that this post would be coming out last weekend? guess whose tablet broke a few days after saying that! so sorry for the delay!! this is long overdue. here’s a link to the drive, as always! everything in this part of the update should be in the miscellaneous folder (outside of the menu icons, which are in the menu folder. wauaua).

unedited versions below the cut, plus some notes. fair warning 90% of this is just ui stuff lol

so! all of this was already done by the time i posted the enemies. the delay isn’t *entirely* because of the tablet issues, i just managed to get distracted by making: even more redraws! i’d say new update soon but after what happened last time i shouldn’t jinx myself. but! almost All of the art for the initial mod release is done!!!! exciting!!!!!!

please be nice to me (silly) this is my first time doing frame by frame animation in… give or take 5 years? i followed the original animations pretty closely, so they don’t look Awful but i am Aware of the jank. i’m not an animator!!! they’re Good Enough for my purposes.

hey did you know that the original teleport map is slightly off center. did you know that. that’s not the case for the redraw for the record but it did make things a little harder. despite that, i think you can tell i was having fun with the dormont part of the map. i would’ve put more detail into the house, but we never really get a more detailed look at it??? and i didn’t want to make assumptions. so that part’s just traced from the original 👍. anyways shoutout to the clocktower being Curved for whatever reason

outside of those, all of the added art is actually just spritework. i didn’t know this at first, but there’s a TON of copies of sprites from the icon set. Basically Everywhere. so those are added now! and should work properly! also added a few sprites that were Missing from my original batch. not going to put them all here, but a few Important ones (which i actually had to make new art for) are the rock paper scissors cheatsheet, the Larger versions of the craft signs (used in the calamité fight and. probably somewhere else idk), and the craft signs for the tutorial kid fight!

aaaand i think that’s it! for stuff from this update. yeah no there’s more coming buddy. my tablet already broke one time this week there’s no way it’s happening twice. i’m not working on portraits Just Yet (though the temptation has been There), but i’ve got the title screens, a few backgrounds, and the ending cgs done! along with a few other assorted cgs sketched out. because im out of my fucking mind. so, uh, see you soon!! enjoy!!

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[meamiki]

Happy Anniversary In Stars and Time!! Have some Friend Quest based drawings :D

(These have specific quote picks related to them! And there's also a long ramble on why I like those specific quotes below if interested)

(And by long, I mean roughly 2k+ words of proper ramble total, so be warned before clicking keep reading this link right here to the rb!!)

[rowyndodendron]

guys I've cracked the code:

Zagreus: high wisdom, low intelligence

Melinoë: high intelligence, low wisdom

[spacedlexi]

maybe if i just put these screenshots together youll understand why i think their relationship just Works so well as it pertains to the characters and themes of S4 in general

neither of them know what theyre doing, but theyre figuring it out Together. the old ways are dead. and together theyll build a new future thats worth fighting for

[mania-sama]

if u don't mind me asking, what is it that makes u prefer kevneil/daysten over andreil? ive never seen someone say that before so im curious! not looking for an argument or anything so don't worry 😅 if u think andreil is terrible or whatever, u can be honest.

thanks so much for sending in an ask!!

Yeah, most people, when it comes to Kevin and his various ships, say that they prefer Kandreil. This, I think, comes from the fact that everyone really likes Andreil the most, and they don't like to separate them for the basis of a Kevin ship. Which is fine for them, but me personally, I just really like Kevneil and don't care much for a poly couple (polyamorous shipping has never been my thing in the first place).

I think my attraction to this ship stems mainly from the fact that Kevin has so much tension with every single character in the cast, so reading him and his interactions from Neil's perspective led me to believe that they would be endgame from the first book. So much so that I would have thought they would have been up until the last book if I had not already been spoiled of the canonical Andreil ending about halfway through reading The Foxhole Court. Neil always speaks of Kevin like he had the biggest crush on him, and it pretty much read as gay subtext for me, what with all of the hiding of identity and skirting of the truth. Kevin, similarly, seemed to me to always look out for Neil in a subtle love and appreciation that only became more apparent as their relationship progressed and they grew to trust each other. The other reason is because I simply don't care as much about Andrew. His story is compelling, but I care a lot more for Kevin and Neil's characters - in both storyline and personalities - than I do for Andrew's.

I also think that Kevin would have been a much better fit for Neil, and vice versa. Andrew is generally a very aggressive person, and although Kevin isn't necessarily calm, I think that Neil should have ended up with someone less volatile to balance out his own intensity and trauma. This isn't to say that I hate Andreil - I'm completely fine with it. I just think Kevneil, in my mind, makes a lot more sense. A part of me still isn't really over the fact that Neil just does not care that Andrew canonically arranged for him to be drugged and sexually assaulted in the book. Like. What. Absolutely deranged behavior. It adds to why I think Kevneil should've been endgame (although I recognize that Kevin was complicit in this arrangement).

(I like to ignore Thea's existence. I do not like her, both for the way Nora doesn't seem to care for writing her and it shows, as well as the fact that she is generally terrible for everything Nora has tried to do with Kevin's character. I genuinely don't know why she's in the story. It almost seems like a way to prevent Kevneil from happening, because I swear on my life that those two have a thousand times more chemistry than Andreil ever did).

[no-light-left-on]

So the Death of the Outsider lacks a chaos system and it makes perfect sense

(I recommend reading my other post on how chaos works in the DH universe first but it is not mandatory.)

The point of the chaos system is, at its core, a reflection of how a world already at its tipping point reacts to the player's actions: Dunwall ridden by the plague and oppressed by the Lord Regent’s rule, Karnaca bloodfly-bitten and slowly torn to shreds by the Duke with people scared after the recent coup.

Billie, however, simply exists as a person once the world has been tipped towards the better, Emily having reclaimed her throne and Karnaca slowly but surely steering towards better times. Her quest is not motivated by politics or by a falling empire. It is entirely personal to her, Daud, and the Outsider.

Billie is an ex-assassin. She puts the world on a tipping point, but she does not decide whether the world rights itself or comes crashing over the edge. She takes jobs from the black market, sometimes killing people for money, because that is all it is to her - a job. And while she may kill innocent people while at it, there is no more terror it can bring atop the cruel rule of the Duke and people dying in the mines. In the end, she will disappear into the shadows. It is just another mugging, another unfortunate murder of a father coming home in the evening. Nothing more, nothing less. No responsibility to take over it after.

She is dedicated to her quest, and that quest is not even hers - it is Daud's, and she is just going along with it out of maybe guilt, maybe old times' sake. She is not even that interested in killing the Outsider herself, has very little stakes in it, and decides to go through with it because it's what Daud wanted. There is no world that can react to her because she is the world that is reacting, in a sense, to Daud's wishes and the Outsider's subtle interventions.

Compared to, say, DH2 which takes place months before the events of DotO, Billie has very little to lose, no place to reclaim, no world to save. The results of her actions, no matter what they might be, won't change how the world is at the end of the game. Emily can choose whether a brilliant doctor lives so she can save lives, she decides whether the Howlers or the Overseers take over Batista, dictates who rules and with how much power, with what level of cruelty. Billie is killing a god, no matter what it takes, and there is little need for consideration of how this result is achieved.

The game does not even have targets, save for one, the Outsider himself. All the missions are about gathering intel and preparing for the job. The structure of the whole game is very different to serve the purpose of the plot and honestly it's a clever choice so that the focus remains on the one thing only - killing the Outsider.

One thing I did not mention in relation to chaos in my other post is that the chaos also influences the Outsider and his speeches at the shrines. Which, fair enough, it is just one more change in dialogue among many. But in the case of DotO, he is directly involved. He is not an observer anymore. He has real reason to be emotionally invested in what is happening and what Billie is doing. He needs to bait her into murder, or change her mind to spare him and free him from his eternal imprisonment. There can't be a change from interest to cynicism as Billie kills more people to get to him, because in the end, he is the target. He wants out of the Void by any means necessary, which means he has to be fully invested at all times. He has no reason to suddenly go soft and make subtle comments. He comes across as so much more malicious in this game, maiming Billie and being so incredibly cruel when he tells her that Daud has passed while she was away. All this because he can't risk her changing her mind, thinking to herself, “Hey, maybe he sucks but he’s not That Bad” and then turning on her heel to leave. He is trying to influence Billie instead, which he didn’t do with his Marked (unless you count his mentions of multiple possible outcomes as influencing, or him telling Daud about Delilah).

So no, the world won't change for you, the player. It won't change because you chose not to kill anyone, not even the contract targets, because if you don't do the dirty work, someone else will. And the Outsider cannot change either, because Billie is not changing the fate of an empire. She is changing the fate of Him, personally, and he cannot afford to let her choose the only bad choice - indifference. So there is no point in a chaos at all.

No matter what Billie does in the end, the outcome will be the same - the Void will change. sShe will change the universe as they know it, but no matter how she goes about it, the change will come. She is not faced with a question of what she wants the world to be. She was guided there by others, expected to do one thing - kill a god. The world has set her up, and now she has to react.

And so she comes to the Void and is met with the only choice that will matter: Is she going to show mercy, or remain the same?

[crossbackpoke-check]

it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

[a-blip-of-billdip]

this isnt what i usually post on this blog but I'm already sick of all the memes and 'jokes'. I am almost certainly leaving the fandom for good now because of the book of bills release and NO it is not because billford's community has an influx of supporters.

So the worship and romanticization of asylums and other abusive practices for mental health have been steadily gaining traction in recent years, especially with the rise of tiktok's toxicity.

SO many people, especially younger people, regularly talk about how they want lobotomies or how women they don't like should be lobotomized. They get tattoos of lobotomy like it's some quirky fun thing and not one of the most horrific tortures someone can endure.

These same people, ESPECIALLY leftists, will look at anyone they disagree with or don't like and say "get institutionalized, loser" or "et therapy" and it's always in a mocking way. it's always in a policing way.

because these people know that mental wards strip everyone of their freedom and their bodily autonomy. they know these places arent for healing--theyre for silencing.

So the amount of people i see treating bill being institutionalized like a good thing---even the writers and alex himself?

Yeah. Im out ✌🏼

[langfield]

as much as i’ve grown to really like lost records i do think it’s a little telling that a decent majority of the people who relentlessly praise it do so in an effort to prove how bad de is lol. i’ve never seen this much talk about tell me why, for example, and that’s a game focused heavily on a transman and his queer identity :/ oh, and did i mention it’s a story about the wishy-washy nature of memory? like … lost records does deserve more fanfare but it’s very obvious a big push for it to be popular is based in the fandom hatred of double exposure and this ideology that dontnod is somehow full of superior writers in comparison to all of decknine’s poor employees — which is also why fans have stopped bitching abour lis:1 now, despite the immense criticism leveled towards said media after ep5 released. idk! just sort of grates on me and lessens my enjoyment of lost records in turn

[catinflight]

What's funny is, I was also fresh into joining the Megaman fandom when I watched Fully Charged so the way people got upset about it, didn't affect me because I was new to it 😭

Tbh, my sister was already a fan and saw her watching Megaman Ruby Spears and that's how I got hooked 💀

But there's just a huge difference of having negative opinions towards the show and it's either you watched it completely so it's valid OR you watched someone TALK about it badly which made you also agree with said commenter 😔

FR❗️❗️❗️

People are incredibly hasty when it comes to judging new content from old IP's and I kinda find it disheartening

I dont really understand the collective cynicism surrounding fully charged when it realesed, I'm sure people were heavily disappointed by the show not continuing an existing megaman plot, but I feel as though they also had to have understood that the show was ment to get younger kids interested in the franchise and keep megaman as a franchise atleast a little relevant in the later years, (at least that's my rationalization for why Capcom decided to make another show instead of making another game)

And for what it's worth, the showrunners did try and include bits that nodded to the actual franchise to entertain older fans, (like roll's Rockstar poster, and man man's existence as a whole, and of course suna and the robot masters with their design nods to thier respective counterparts) though I feel like they where a little limited with what they where given

One last small tangent, I see people often complaining about the fully charged robot master designs, especially airman for some reason, and it might just be backseat I didn't grow up eith the classic airman design, but I feel like those who say the classic design is better are just maybe a smidgen based with rode colored glasses, they are both cool designs, don't get me wrong, but I sorta feel like the fully charged airman is just more intricate, as abused to classic airman who is is quite literally a giant fan,

(Agian, no hate, I like both designs, I just think fc Airman has more going for him design wise,)

[willows-unnamed-rpg]

Week 2

Overview and thoughts

I decided I want to try to make one post a week with progress on my project, so I figured I should be more transparent on what these posts should look like and some more insight into what I am working towards.

Each post should be up on Monday to highlight what I been working on for this system/game. I intended to release a playtest of the system that will be open to the public. I currently have only myself on the project so progress will be slow but once I have some sort of Alpha test or something I'm comfortable having people run with I'll post a link to a pdf and host it in a pinned post. I know that this will require a lot and my goal is to have a simple adventure module to test out along with some handfuls of additional monsters to play with if you don't want a module. This is ambitious but I need to shoot for the moon

Beginning on the System - TTRPG stuff to be used for my game

I mentioned briefly in last week's post that I wanted to do a point buy based system and I figured I should go into some depth about what I currently have so far.

I like the idea of loosely placing abilities/features into one of three categories based on traditional MMO style features: Tank, Damage, and Support (I am going to change these names, they are not final). I also want some semblance of balance, so trees or pathways make sense, invest more into something and it gets better. I also want things to overlap so it's more a Venn Diagram and less a defined category. I was also thinking to split based on archetypes but that would be limiting I think. I would want my favorite archetypes to work (spell sword, life as a resource) along with other traditional (fighter, ranger) and non traditional styles (using magical objects rather than magic itself, specific weapon oriented builds).

I also think the point buy idea should help with encounter balance since encounters of specified difficulties will be using a specific amount of points and a Game Master can make encounters based on those points (kinda like armies in war games like Warhammer)

The fear here is that the point buy system will lead a player down a rabbit hole of poor build optimization or choice paralysis. I feel poor build optimization can be solved with allowing players to rebuild their character somewhat with a narrative beat (or in game mechanic for when I bring it over to the rpg but a system like that is common across RPGs so it's not a design flaw imo). The choice paralysis is. I think I need to guide players to cool endcap abilities or features along with features that require investing in multiple areas, like let's say applying poisons in combat without taking up turn resources is an investment in some kind of rogue aligned tree and an alchemy based tree. I think I am finding both Pathfinder and Fallout: New Vegas as inspiration for Horizontal Progression.

Now onto what I have so far for Character Creation. I think I am going to be giving the player about 50 total points they can use for creating a character but are required to use 20 for statistics (I am going to be running with D&D/Pathfinder stats) and 10 for Saving Throws as a minimum. I think players should be able to spend more on these if they would like but it would limit how much depth they get at level one. A player's "Heritage" will either cost points, give points, or be point neutral since if one Heritage gives more benefits or Horizontal potential I think it should cost a player and if a Heritage is very flavorful but punishing, the player should be able to try to use their points to help circumvent these issues or play into their strengths.

My issue I see with this could lead into ridiculous brews since how wide the system is. But that also might not be an actual issue. I need to nail down my specific demographic since this is an indie project and won't have wide appeal, I should find a niche and stick to it rather than trying to take on the juggernauts.

Some notes about my research into non-western piracy

I have begun my initial dive into non Caribbean Piracy and I have found some areas of interest I need to dig into, like the Chen Zuyi, a pirate from the 1400 to 1407 and the Wokou. Forgive me for spelling anything wrong as I am so far working off of Wikipedia as a help to find some primary sources.

Chen Zuyi seems like a very interesting character with little info in the West (unsurprisingly). He seemed to rule over Palembang which I happen to know where that is due to EU4 and my love for naval/trade gameplay as I have played the nation of Palembang and I knew they had an event to reform into a pirate republic. So it's really cool to actually learn a bit about this. I need to find some more primary sources about this man but it seems a bit hard with how little there is in English.

The Wokou were pirates who raided Korea and China from the 13th century to 17th. Again similar to Palembang, in EU4 you can play the Daimyo of So on Tsushima and reform into a Pirate Republic with an event referencing the Wokou, so I knew there was something in this region but that was it going into my initial research. Wikipedia has alot more info on this group but it seems to a bit controversial to claim that The Wokou are all Japanese, when there is evidence to point that the early Wokou were from several different ethnic groups where people whole lived on the fringes of society. Which makes me want to draw parallels to pirates during the golden age of piracy but I need to do more research.

Recommended Reading for this week

I noticed that the whole book Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trades in the Greater China Seas show up during my reading about the Wokou so I am going to try to read that this week off of some kinda of online library or archive (or get it from my local library's inter library loan)

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[quadrantadvisor]

I'm trying so hard not to be a hater but the more I learn about other ttrpgs the more the way that people talk about dnd annoys me

[dragonroar64]

hey btw while y'all are here for the headcanons. how would you like to go play HIKEBACK by clowndream on itch.io. it's free, and you don't even have to download it okay. I promise it's great. pspsps join me in small fandom hell so it can be less small, pspspspsps.

if playing it yourself isn't something you want to do, there are also several playthroughs on youtube! I recommend the one by manlybadasshero; it's far back but it's high quality and under two hours and you won't regret it