#shapeshifter

[chocoperrito]

wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag wag

[mischefous]

quick messy sketch of an idea I had that would not leave me alone.

I present to you Shifter!Wild

ok bye

[anim-ttrpgs]

Wait does Eureka have its own established lore for how different supernatural creatures work?

Yes, it does!

(I’m going to preface this post by saying that just about everything I’m talking about here, and more, is available FOR FREE for you to read in the free pre-release version of the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook that you can download from our website. Go to Chapter 8 to start reading about the supernatural lore. The rulebook itself will do a lot better job of explaining all this than I will, because it has the exact details of how each one works, and I’m just hitting the highlights and going over what those details mean.)

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a game about very human and believable investigators digging into dangerous (often supernatural) mysteries way over their heads, and sometimes those very human and believable investigators will be supernatural creatures themselves.

These supernatural creatures are every bit as human and “normal” as their mundane investigators counterparts, they have jobs, friends, families, hobbies, etc. They live among mundane society, not outside of it.

Most modern fantasy settings have some kind of separation between normal society and magical society, like you see in Harry Potter where there is normal society, and then a separate, secret magical society hidden away from it, or Vampire: The Masquerade, where vampires all have an agreement to keep themselves a secret from normal society despite acting within it.

In Eureka’s world, there is no “masquerade,” but that doesn’t mean that magic and monsters are well-known and well-documented phenomenons. Supernatural creatures such as vampires, wolfmen, etc. are exceptionally rare. Don’t take this as an exact number, but you can probably assume there’s about one of these per every 3.3 million normal people.

This rarity, as well as the fact that each individual has little to gain and everything to lose by revealing themselves (try “coming out” as a person who regularly assaults people and drains their blood), has led to them going largely undocumented in the modern day. Sure, this is the digital age, there are videos, but viral videos are not exactly scientific evidence. For every real vampire caught on camera, there are a thousand hoaxes and horror short films.

There is no secret vampire government controlling things from the shadows—most vampires don’t even know any other vampires, let alone enough to form a secret society with any effect on national politics.

As for how they work, well, that’s one of my favorite parts to talk about.

There are five playable monster types in Eureka (The Vampire, The Wolfman, The Fairy, The Witch, and The Thing From Beyond) plus two extras that are Kickstarter stretch goals (The Dullahan and The Gorgon), but in the interest of time, I’m only going to really go into detail with one of them.

Most playable monster types in Eureka are very, very old-school, with an emphasis on actual historical folklore over just making up all our own lore. That doesn’t mean Eureka doesn’t have a unique approach to the supernatural, though. Little of it is “new,” but it is certainly unique, because to my knowledge no other RPG has ever taken the old stuff this far before. A PC being a monster in Eureka isn’t just a few +1s here and there and maybe a little extra damage from silver weapons, it means playing by an entirely different set of rules from fellow investigators.

The vampires and vampire lore you see in movies are not folkloric vampires, they are mostly a 20th and 21st century pop-culture creation. Eureka’s vampire abilities, weaknesses, and other traits are based on pre-1900 vampire legends, with older traits usually taking precedent over newer ones. Thus, a lot of assumptions you might have about vampires going in could end up being very wrong. For instance, in movies, vampires instantly die when exposed to sunlight, but the first ever instance of a vampire in a story being killed by sunlight was in the 1922 film Nosferatu. In Eureka, sunlight is still awful for vampires, it strips them of their vampiric powers, but it doesn’t do any real damage to them. Sunlight is an issue vampires have to deal with, but it is far from instant death. That doesn’t mean being a vampire is inherently easy though, because in addition to having all the powers that folkloric vampires have (which is a TON), they also have all the weaknesses, and it is the emphasis on weaknesses that really makes the moment-to-moment playing of a monster PC in Eureka the most interesting. A few of my favorites for vampires are the refusal to enter homes without a direct invitation, and the compulsion to count large numbers of small objects. I think most vampire media these days considers these to be “silly” weaknesses and don’t want to acknowledge them in the lore of their “serious” scary horror vampires, but honestly I think that the “sillier” vampire stuff can still be used to great effect in horror. Imagine knowing that the only reason a vicious killer at your door hasn’t stormed in to rip your throat out is because they’re being polite.

A vampiric investigator will need to work around these weaknesses, and more, in their daily life, all while being sure not to reveal their true nature to their more mortal friends. It’s something that really changes how a character behaves and goes about problem-solving.

For instance, the rest of the party may be able to break into a house no-problem, but the vampire cannot. They need a invitation. That’s a problem. That’s a puzzle. It makes me excited just thinking about it.

This was originally going to be a much longer post where I went into more of the themes of monsters in Eureka, but I have decided that that would be most cohesive as its own post, an upcoming essay titled "How Eureka Handles Disability." So stay tuned for that.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th! Back it while you still can!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[dreamdropsystem]

i've never felt human

Shane never felt human never ever Shane's always knew they were different and when they learned about otherkin and therian and stuff

althuman and alterhuman human and just nonhuman identities in general Shane felt seen.

i felt like i wasn't the only one out there that I dealt with this like when I was the smallest I often felt like a husky mainly, but I grew up I had different forms to diffeent animals because i'm a angel shapeshifter i shift unconsciously does it without meaning to it just does it just shifts to any animal it (brain) wants can't control shifting but trying to still cope with being nonhuman. feel like an animal angel constantly. just shifts to different creatures. - Shane/Theo/Bug/Angel/Locket

[satuwn]

TETRIS the Silly Bandz chimera ✨

[draconic-absurdism]

The completed POOLROOMS series: THE SYMBOLIC, THE SENSORY, AND THE AUTISTIC

[watchforstars]

🎶 I wap-bam-boom, Alakazam‼️🎵 | Hazbin Hotel Episode 8: Season Finale

Bonus:

[foldingfittedsheets]

The Seventh Score

Part One || Part 2 (current)

The Seventh Score: Part 1 || Part 2

Rival thieves compete to steal scores before the other can get to it- but the real score is the love they find along the way!

I hope you enjoyed reading! If this made you smile please consider tipping over at my Ko-fi! Tips really help me out, and comics are a huge labor or love.

You can find a directory of my other queer comics here, but don't forget to reblog this one!

[luseals]

changeling ⟡

ending 2022 with a personal piece! thank you to everyone who has supported me and my work this year <3

[lalalalupia]

I NEED MORE SHAPESHIFTER MERLIN FIC, PLS I SWEAR I NEED IT FOR MY LIFE.

[oh-shit-i-spilled-my-genderfluid]

The fact that god did not give me the gift of shapeshifting, to be able to turn from a beautiful high-femme lady to a completely androgynous person to a handsome masculine bearded man, is truly an act of transphobia

[weaponizedducks]

'but girl she killed people!' so. she deserved to what do you want me to do about it

[mothpawbs]

i wear my scary mask when i'm afraid i don't belong you can't read my brain until it's off, not coming off

what if chameleon... but inscryption. basically.

[wyrmsfornerves]

Shapeshifter illustration based on @jasperygrace 's poem for 13 Days Advent : Monsters & Myths

13daysadvent.carrd.co

[obscure-entity]

trying to be less apprehensive about making my sona more expressive. i need to make it more bastardly i think. given thbe chance would you throw me