#storytelling that's fitting this campaign so so well

[wizard-hubris]

#also the whole the gods never did anything for me thing that keeps happening#not to be rude but did you ever try to contact them or did you just think they would randomly intercede#if you avoid their spheres of influence don’t be shocked if they also avoid you

these tags by @wackachewbacca on this post reminded me of a German saying/joke I’ve heard in Cologne once. I didn’t want to derail the original post too much, so here’s my own. Anyway, the joke goes: “A man prays to God everyday, ‘please, God, let me win the lottery.’ Every day: ‘please, God, let me win the lottery.’ Every week, every day: ‘I didn’t win the lottery again. Oh why, God? Please, please let me win the lottery!’ One day, finally, he hears a voice answer his prayer. It sounds very tired as it says ‘Come on, pal, give me a chance. Buy a ticket.’ ”

And this feels very much exactly like what is described in the tags and I agree completely. Pointedly not talking about Deanna and her understandably complex relationship with the Dawnfather (which is very very delicious and I love every second it’s onscreen) here, because that’s not what I mean. Complicated relationships between Gods and their followers are interesting and a great exploration (also see pretty much everything re: FCG since they started following the Changebringer), but those are decidedly not the people ever going “What have the gods ever done for me?” It’s so far mostly been people that say themselves “Oh no, I don’t really have anything to do with the gods”. If they indicated that they worshipped one or some of the Exandrian gods for a significant time and then felt snubbed when they asked for help and didn’t receive any, I might understand their point a bit more (even if the matter would probably be more complicated). But as it is, it’s like if the guy in the joke wouldn’t even pray to his god to get a lottery ticket, it’s just a person randomly going “Well, the gods certainly never helped ME win the lottery” after hearing that someone wants to dispose of the gods.

And yes, they’re engaging the whole thing in the show with a bit more nuance than I probably give them credit for here, but combined with the number of times the same arguments get brought up without anything new (or even old valid) points to back it up, it gets a bit much for me. Especially with how exhausting the fandom can be about this topic.

[heytherecentaurs]

Burrow's End is an absolute masterpiece.

In the span of ten episodes Aabria and Co. weave an exciting and emotional adventure story about a family of sentient stoats. It delivers huge laughs, interesting societal criticism, remarkably emotional and well-acted scenes and concludes with a series of epilogue scenes that feel appropriate for each character, some heartfelt and subdued and others bigger than life and all the funnier for it.

Siobhan and Izzy play the perfect pair of siblings. They fight and argue but they also love each other. Jaysohn (Siobhan) looks up to Lila (Izzy) and believes she's the smartest stoat in the world (and by the end she probably is) and Lila hypes up her little brother's athletic skills. They both fully embodied these kids and I could watch them do fun stuff for more episodes. Give me a version of Saved by the Bell with them. Stoat by the Bell.

Brennan and Rashawn, playing sisters, also knock it outta the park, showing a more mature sibling dynamic. Brennan portrays Tula as the quintessential overtired single mother of excitable kids, and Rashawn as younger sister Viola straddles a very interesting line of being intimidating to outsiders but very much more naive and looking to her older sister when she starts a family.

Jasper as Thorn, a guy everyone just lets be a cult leader because he really wanted to, is fantastic. His is a difficult role as the only non-blood relative. Jasper plays Thorn with such real humanity of a guy in over his head and letting his ambition wife call the shots, but also one who agrees with her goal, really loves her and has moments of real menace. He has some very funny scenes, his big speech is perfect, and I just enjoy him.

Erika is wonderful. They play the epitome of generational trauma as many have said but as much trauma as Ava has, she is also loving and willing to learn. The fact Erika took this adversarial role is incredible. The tense dramatic scene primarily between Ava, Tula and Viola is amazing. They act their asses off and make hard choices that I imagine are difficult even for such an experienced player.

Aabria's DMing always feels fun. She doesn't get bogged down in the rules. She knows them. She plays by them. But as a master, she knows how and when to break them too. Her seasons on Dimension 20 have all had a tenseness, a particular edge to them that can give me anxiety during dramatic scenes between two characters. It always feel like one of her NPCs may say something devastating and the tension between characters reaches really thrilling heights. This is present in other seasons, but I don't think anyone does it as well as she does. The first season of hers to have battle maps, Aabria really swung for the fences and gave us some of the wildest maps to date.

Shout out to Carlos Luna's voice acting. He did an incredible job. And shout out to the whole crew who have put together one of the best seasons of D20. They keep finding ways to build on what's come before and they should be commended for it.

Dimension 20 is most successful when the concept is very streamlined. They don't do huge 100 episode campaigns capable of handling huge winding complex narrative, but short focused D&D stories, which is why many of the Side Quests have been so fantastic. They embody this philosophy most clearly, but it's apparent in the most beloved Intrepid Heroes seasons as well—John Hughes/High Fantasy, Game of Thrones/Candyland, Retrofuturism, Film Noir but in a Brain... Burrow's End fits this perfectly. It's streamlined concept paired with great storytellers and great chemistry sets it up to be a smash hit before it begins. And goddamn does it deliver.

Thanks Stupendous Stoats!

[sidekick-hero]

(steddie | explicit | 1.1k | tags: established relationship, sub!eddie, top!eddie, dom!steve, bottom!steve, porn with feelings, Good Boy Eddie | @steddielovemonth Love is liking the version of yourself you are with them the best by @tinytalkingtina | AO3)

Eddie has been called many things in his life. Some good, more bad.

He's been called a good friend, a herder of lost sheep, a dungeon master, a rock star, even a hero.

But he's also been called a pariah, a coward, a waste of space, a fuckup, trailer trash, a freak, a murderer, a monster.

But no one had ever called him a good boy. Not until Steve.

Ever since he was a little kid, Eddie had learned to fit in, to become whatever someone needed him to be.

When his ma got sick, he learned to be her sweet little boy, quiet and uncomplicated instead of loud and wild. To take up as little space as possible, one less thing for his mama to worry about.

After she died, Eddie learned to be self-reliant. An adult in a child's body, able to take care of himself because who else would. Whenever his father was around, he adopted the Munson charm, the easy smile and empty flattery. He learned how to hot-wire cars, pick locks, steal, lie.

In the process, he learned to hate himself and even more the path his father was trying to set him on.

It wasn't until he started living with his Uncle Wayne that he didn't know who to be, because his uncle never asked him to do anything but be himself. Which should have been a relief, but by then Eddie had almost forgotten who that was.

So he began to reinvent himself in ways that made sense to him.

A storyteller, like Tolkien, spinning tales through his campaigns and having his party hanging on his every word.

A rock star, like Osbourne, van Halen, or Hammett, who played his heart out and made himself heard through his music.

A rebel, like Bowie, who stood up for those who, like him, were on the fringes of society, being their shield and offering them a safe place and a community where they could be their wonderfully weird selves.

Those versions of him were all Eddie, but at the same time they weren't. Not all of him.

Not the soft parts, the sweet and sincere and quiet parts he thought he lost when his mom died. Being all that for her hadn't been enough, it hadn't saved her, so Eddie buried that part of himself with her and became someone else. Someone the world couldn't break so easily.

Until Steve.

Brave and reckless, kind and bitchy and oblivious, self-sacrificing and self-centered, vain and dorky Steve. An enigma if Eddie ever met one. One he couldn't get enough of, each layer a new but pleasant surprise.

With Steve, Eddie doesn't have to reinvent himself, doesn't have to be any of the stories or boxes or labels.

With Steve, Eddie can let go.

With Steve, Eddie can stop looking over his shoulder.

With Steve, Eddie can let down his guard and show his soft belly.

With Steve, Eddie can be a good boy, sweet and obedient and sincere.

"You're doing so good, baby, so good for me. Fucking me so well, so sweet, feeding me that thick cock of yours. Can feel it in my throat. All for me, my good boy treating me so well," Steve coos with his mouth right next to Eddie's ear. They've been at it for what seems like hours and Eddie is so far gone, trembling in Steve's arms as he keeps rocking his hips, the only thing on his mind is Steve. Being good for Steve.

He's already made Steve come down his throat, lapping up every single drop like the good boy he is, before opening Steve up with his fingers and tongue. He pulled another orgasm out of him as he kept stroking across his prostate while licking messily inside him where he had spread him open on his fingers.

Eddie thought they were done, but Steve had other plans as he gathered up his own cum to spread over Eddie's cock, intention clear. Eddie had hesitated, afraid to hurt Steve because it was too much. It was only when he told Eddie to fuck him with a smoldering look from under his lashes that he finally, carefully, pushed inside him.

He's been hard and aching ever since Steve pushed him to his knees and made him nuzzle the bulge in Steve's tight Levis.

He's been ready to come since Steve's cock hit the back of his throat, moaning so prettily as it fluttered around him.

He's been holding himself back from coming by the skin of his teeth since Steve started clinging to him, overstimulated and loving and everything Eddie could ever want, cooing the sweetest and filthiest praise as Eddie slid in and out of the hot, tight grip of his body.

"What do you want baby, tell me, I'll give you everything my sweet little thing, just tell me what you need." Steve's soothing voice washes over him and he realizes he's whimpering into the sweaty skin of Steve's neck.

"You," Eddie replies without hesitation. "Just you, wanna make you feel good, 's all I need, just you." He's babbling, too far gone to be anything close to coherent. Reduced to his soft, needy core. "Love you so much, wanna stay like this forever, never wanna leave you." Things he never thought he'd say out loud spill out of his mouth and he can feel Steve tighten around him, impossibly so and he's so close but he can't, not without -

"Eddie, baby, don't stop, 'm so close, I love you too," Steve pants before whimpering, "Oh God, you're making me come again, kiss me, please, baby, kiss me."

He can't really feel his body anymore, his mouth clumsily seeking Steve's, but he could never deny him anything. Especially not when he's begging him so sweetly.

They both come within seconds of each other, no more words needed. Steve, whose legs and arms are wrapped around Eddie so tightly that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, is the first to spill between their bellies. The fluttering of his hole, the bucking of his hips and the rhythmic way he clenches around him makes Eddie follow suit.

It almost hurts in its intensity after holding back for so long and he can't help the pitiful whimpering or the overwhelming tears.

Cradling Eddie's head in his giant hands, Steve wipes away the tears and kisses the whines from Eddie's trembling mouth. More tears follow, his love and devotion and gratitude for being loved in this way running down his cheeks as salty droplets, and Steve kisses them away as well.

"You were perfect," he whispers between his kisses, "I love you so much."

When his face is clean, the tears finally stopped, Eddie sinks back down onto the man beneath him. The man who gave him back this side of himself, a side he missed and mourned without even knowing it. A version of himself he has learned to love, to like best, thanks to Steve Harrington and his unwavering love for Eddie.

[thehomelybrewster]

How Much Do Systems Matter?

This post is directly inspired by the video "You shouldn't use DnD for narrative campaigns." by Questing Beast (aka Ben Milton) about the Polygon article "Worlds Beyond Number is teaching me things that no D&D book can" by Charlie Hall.

The video and article basically posit the following:

TTRPGs can use concretely designed procedures for certain types of challenges and scenarios while having much looser procedures for other types of challenges or scenarios

Just because a TTPRG has less thorough rules on a type of challenge or scenario than a different RPG tackling the same subject matter doesn't automatically make the former worse at being used for these scenarios than the latter

Depending on the preferences of the table, having a robust mechanical framework for one element of gameplay while lacking that for other types of gameplay may be preferrable than having robust mechanical frameworks for both

Having distinct game mechanics for narrative progression and character interactions is uncommon in D&D and derived games, but is very common in story games, e.g. most Powered by the Apocalypse games.

The Polygon article includes this quote by Worlds Beyond Number's Brennan Lee Mulligan: "[People say that] because D&D has so many combat mechanics, you are destined to tell combat stories. I fundamentally disagree. Combat is the part I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me, while I take care of emotions, relationships, character progression, because that shit is intuitive and I understand it well. I don’t intuitively understand how an arrow moves through a fictional airspace."

This intuitive knowledge on handling emotional beats, narrative, and characters of course stems from years of experience Brennan has as a writer, actor, improv teacher, comedian, camp counsellor, and professional TTRPG GM and player.

Using Ron Edwards design language (s. his 1999 essay "System Does Matter"), Brennan wants to run primarily narrativist games, while 5e would fit Edwards' idea of a Gamist system, i.e. one which involves the pursuit of "winning" against NPCs.

Now let's look at 5e: it's generally agreed upon that 5e is opinionated on combat, while also being vocal that exploration and social encounters, while less fleshed-out, are still part of its pillars alongside combat, meaning the game is still encouraging you to pursue these types of play.

Combat is a very fleshed-out series of systems. The action system is centered on combat, both in terms of time and types. Spellcasting is very distinct and allows for casting mostly offensive or defensive spells. Class progression usually focuses on improving one's combat capabilities.

Exploration and social interactions are much more bare-bones.

On the social side, a few more recent supplements have reintroduced the classic Attitude table present in earlier editions and which are a mainstay of the OSR community. Additionally the DMG spends merely three pages on how to run NPCs, mostly using fairly general advice instead of concrete game mechanics. Interaction between player characters is also barely discussed in 5e rules.

Exploration is similarly simple, mostly related to the omnipresent but simple skill system, as well as some relatively simple rules on weather, hazards, overland travel speed, and tracking rations.

5e's shift towards simplified rules for these two pillars, including simplifying the skill system into a mostly binary failure-success affair is a shift away from earlier D&D editions and some of its direct competitors, e.g. Pathfinder, Rolemaster, GURPS, and The Dark Eye, which often would involve subsystems for various aspects of social or exploratory encounters, s. Edwards' "System does Matter" essay and his point on simulationist games.

So if Brennan wants to run a narrative game where we can realiably use his knowledge of narratives and character writing to create a compelling story while having a set system as his backup to run situations where violence becomes a factor... Using a game like 5e is a decent choice.

Of course other systems might be even better for that. Shadowdark for example may just be the perfect fit for someone wanting to run a narrative game with occasional combat. The combat rules are thorough enough to cover the fundamentals. Sure, you may just need to get rid of real-time torches, the key mechanic which sets Shadowdark apart from other OSR games, but subtracting a mechanic, instead of modifying it, is a relatively uninvasive procedure.

Personally I too like it when my TTRPG, especially stuff intended for medium- or long-term play, doesn't touch social and narrative elements much mechanically.

Meanwhile games like Ironsworn and Heart - The City Below, which are much more narrative-focused, do have issues where their resolution mechanics clash with the fiction in ways that would pull be out of the story we're trying to tell. Heart has the issue with the Supplies resistance not being shared within the group, and Ironsworn's fulfillment of vows can be glacially slow (s. A. A. Voigt's "Ironsworn: A Narrative Dilemma" video essay).

Ultimately, it all comes down to preference. Personally, if I wanted to run a fantasy game with magic and a strong narrative (like Worlds Beyond Number), with the clear goal of not getting bogged down in combat or minis, I'd legit use Shadowdark as described above. If I knew I wanted to tell a specific type of story and knew of a game that was designed for these types of stories, I'd definitely give it a read and talk about it with my players before we adopt it.

However, I do implore folks to not Ship of Theseus a game with tons of homebrew and houserules so that it's no longer recognizable as its original game. If you ever feel compelled to do that, ask other players what systems might be a better fit for your needs.

[sparklepirate]

I love the batshit storytelling power of tabletop games.

Things my players have done in our campaign so far:

- Left Glaedr's eldunarí to freeze outside because they used him as an eye for their snowman and then forgot about him while they ran off to do their mission

- My werecat player traumatized the thirteen year old dragon rider student by giving him a "prophecy" about how he is destined for great things, but he was going to be betrayed by the person he trusts the most (he pulled that completely out of his ass).

- My dragon player has made a pact with the weird groundskeeper/janitor around campus to fuel her kleptomaniac tendency, and steal a gem from my blacksmith player. More on that to come.

- They did some absolutely heinous things to a pack of Shrrg in their first combat encounter. RIP.

- They adopted one of the Shrrg after they doomed him to a slow death of starvation by shattering his teeth (horrible). They healed him, and charmed him into being a friend, and then forged him a new set of magically enchanted steel dentures, so now he is going to be a permanent party member!

- They essentially ignored the main quest (a mysterious circle of destruction and mutated Shrrg that suggest a magical detonation in the same vein of the Vroengard explosion/the Galbatorix explosion only a few miles from the school) in order to go on a new self imposed sidequest of... Well.

- First the party cajoled Saphira into dragging back a Christmas tree.

- The bard (my boyfriend irl) has an antagonistic love-hate relationship with Glaedr (somehow) and spontaneously invented the holiday Christmas in universe while trying to convince Glaedr to sub in as a Christmas ornament. Glaedr refused.

- The whole party, now on board, convinced all the other eldunarí to be Christmas tree ornaments. Glaedr eventually caved and agreed to be the tree topper (the most prestigious position for the most important eldunarí, of course, they told him).

- They decided to name the holiday Gladmas in his honor.

- They came up with the (completely original) idea of a Gladmas icon- a man on the back of a beautiful glittering red dragon, who visits all the little children and leaves them presents. They came up with a plan to use all the eldunarí to power a hasten spell to get them around the world in one night. And they know just the perfect duo to pull this off! The only rider around with a red dragon who would fit the bill!

- So next session is going to be a side quest to convince Murtagh to become Santa Claus.

[tyrantisterror]

No Small Feat Artwork Pt. 2 - Major NPCs

By request, I'm gonna show off some of the artwork for No Small Feat, a Midgaheim story my friends and I told through the TTRPG system Fabula Ultima. I drew a lot of characters and monsters for it, and my friends - in particular, @dragonzzilla, @scatha5, and @dinosaurana - helped line and color them so we'd have cute little sprites to use on our online battlemaps, which really helped sell the whole "we're playing an oldschool turn based RPG" vibe that Fabula Ultima's system is going for.

This batch is comprised of what I'm calling the Major NPCs - recurring non-player characters who had a big role in the campaign. Fabula Ultima has a Bond system that gives players a tangible benefit for getting invested in the story and characters they meet in the game, so I tried to structure it so they would have some character who they'd be inclined to form those bonds with so they could exploit that mechanic. I personally love it when a game gives a mechanical incentive to getting invested in its story, it just seems so intuitive and obvious for an RPG, and I wanted to do my best to make that mechanic work.

The first recurring NPC the party met was Leonie Ymbessil. Most of the characters in No Small Feat were designed to fit fairy tale archetyepes, and in Leonie's case, she's the Disobedient Girl - your Red Riding Hood/Goldilocks style young woman who is given sound advice that she promptly ignores, which draws her into peril as a result. There are disobedient boys in fairy tales too, but the way their stories play out tend to vary quite a bit - a disobedient girl will almost always be thrust into incredible danger that, if she even survives it, will leave her so traumatized that she never breaks a rule again, while disobedient boys get to rob giants through trickery and guile and become kings.

And while No Small Feat was a fairy tale homage by design, I also wanted it to be a bit of a subversion when it came to some tropes - Fairy Tales off the Rails, if you will. And one of my big secret goals was to see if I could convincingly buck convention and get my auidence/fellow storytellers on the disobedient girl's side, and help her make out like a bandit the way all the disobedient boys do.

Leonie began the story as the spendthrift daughter of a wealthy merchant, who was currently down on her luck because her father cut her off for being too careless with money and forced her to work in one of his shops to earn a living. But she also had a plan - namely, to marry some lonely rich bastard and live off his fortune. Though definitely greedy, Leonie is also incredibly charitable, often giving away ludicrous amounts of whatever wealth she gained in a particular arc to people who were needy or just glum - her spendthrift nature is partly a reflection of her desire to see other people happy and taken care of.

Eventually Leonie, like the PCs, became more formidable as the story went along, occasionally even acting as a temporary ally for a couple boss fights. She, uh, might have taken up my brain a bit. I have a lot of Leonie art that wasn't strictly necessary for the campaign, but was necessary for my happiness. Some of that art I can even show in public!

(there's even more of it, but we'll get to it when we cover another Major NPC)

The next Major NPC the heroes were introduced to was Sir George Garston I, who is essentially Midgaheim's take on Saint George. The most prolific dragonslayer of all time, George is an affable, down-to-earth gentleman who, at the beginning of the campaign, saw his duty as being the protection of mankind against vicious beasts. Our party was leery of him because, well, because they know I love dragons to death and that my Midgaheim setting is positively flooded with dragons who are Really Good Guys, so a guy whose whole deal is "he's killed a shitload of dragons" has to be bad news, right?

And, like, George definitely was not a perfect person at the beginning of the game - he views the conflicts between dragons and humans from the human side by default, never once questioning whether the dragons may be the wronged party from time to time. But he ultimately proved to be a person who wanted to help his fellow human beings, and one who did not delight in killing - dragonslaying, to him, was an ugly but necessary job, and when the story unfolded to the point where he could see how, sometimes, humans were the aggressors in these conflicts, George did shift his view, recognizing that dragons were living things who needed to be protected at times too. The nuances of living in a world where giant lizards are capable of abstract thought but rarely capable of expressing it in ways humans can understand.

George was also a sort of secretly sad individual, being blessed/cursed with a magically extended lifespan and a much slower aging process, which allowed him to not only outlive his wife by decades, but look far younger than he feels in the process, which was wreaking havoc on his psyche at the start of the campaign. Our heroes caught George in the first of what are likely many breakdowns in an immortal's life where they wonder why they still exist when everything they loved has passed. It's ok, the party got him what passes for therapy in a vaguely medieval fantasy land.

Our party had one more fabled hero to meet among the Major NPCs, and that was none other than the posterboy for Disobedient Boy heroes in Fairy Tales, Jack Giantslayer. Midgaheim goes with the "all the Jacks in Fairy Tales are the same Jack" approach, and the result was a neurotic, twitchy, easily startled mess of a ginger who my notes told me to "Try to channel Charlie Day as much as possible, even though you can't do a good Charlie Day impression." Oh, and he's blessed (cursed?) to be really good at killing ogres, even when he's not trying to - which our heroes found out when he tried to cause a distraction with his slingshot, only for his pebble to pingpong around until it hit a painting that fell off from just the right height and angle to decapitate the ogre butler they were trying to avoid.

Anyway he ended up dating Leonie fuck you it's my RPG I can indulge if I want

Our party had a few nonhuman helpers, too. The Phenex chick was rescued by them after they fended off a pissed and dying phenex, and provided them with a small but occasionally refreshed supply of ashes that could be used to bring a player back up from 0 HP mid-battle. They also met a bridled kelpie that, once freed, decided to help shepherd them around, giving them a fast travel option that was VERY useful given the... other travel mechanic this game had going on, which you'll find out in a later entry.

Some of our PCs needed an extra kick out the proverbial door in session 0. In Charles's case, he was led astray by Cassandra, a sphinx in Aesopton who lived on the outskirts of town and was always gloomy and aloof around others. Being burdened with the gift of prophecy, Cassandra had somewhat selfish motivations in leading Charles astray, as she knew he would not only be crucial in saving Engelsex from the crisis that was going on in the campaign, but would also be able to rescue her when she was kidnapped and placed into a menagerie sometime after Charles was lost. Charles didn't hold it against her, though, and the two ended up in a bit of a romance by the end of things.

For Montblanc and Edmund, though, I called upon another fairy tale archetype: the Wicked Witch. And I specifically grabbed one of the biggest from English folklore, albeit with a slight tweak to her name - Bleak Annis, infamous hag and boogeyman, cursed Charles to take on a bestial shape while gifting Montblanc a grimoire before tasking him to draw 100 beasts. She wasn't done there, either, showing up now and then to manipulate the rest of the party into finding the right clues and being in the right places at the right time to face the big threat, all while remaining ambiguous about her true intentions for most of the plot. She also served as the pokedex narrator for Montblanc's growing bestiary, which was fun for me to RP.

And that's our major recurring players! Well, except for the antagonists of course, but we'll cover them as we look at individual arcs from here on out.

[songoftrillium]

so I've been considering running a W5 game for some friends of mine who have been having a blast with our V5 campaign. We'd have to use a *severely long* list of houserules and lore to make it anything other than a massive trash fire of...well, everything that W5 is now. Unfortunately it's likely to be W5 instead of W20 due to the players bouncing off the x20 rules HARD. Any suggestions as to what gaping holes I should focus on first, rules-and-lore-wise?

I apologize for this essay of a response. In terms of the major mechanics holes to focus on, a friend of mine, Kaidan, was a game playtester that ran a number of games at Gencon, and has done the emotional labor of reading through the entire W5 corebook and identifying ways to make the game playable. For house rules, I'd start there.

The rest of this post is LONG, so buckle up and get a drink before reading on under the cut.

Regarding Gaia's Howl, which isn't addressed in the book, I'd look to the Mind's Eye Theater: Werewolf: the Apocalypse, the last corebook in OWoD that furthers the world metaplot. I believe the mark that was missed in a big way in w5 was that the Age of Apocalypse in that book more or less encompasses exactly what they were trying to achieve in terms of the worldwide destruction of caerns, the death of many old canon NPCs, and the Last Words of Gaia, which was a prophecy laid out by King Albrecht in his final moments of life while destroying the Storm Eater:

“Hope is not sundered; wake me, and a new age of harmony shall begin.”

Nuff said there. You shouldn't really need this corebook to play, but if you can find any information on the Age of Apocalypse online, I recommend using that as your kickoff point to explain how we got here.

Now, on to lore.

As the Storyteller, there are few ways around it; you'll have to read some old materials to construct your own chronicle. A little-known piece of information is that no one edition of Legacy Werewolf was ever meant to supersede the other. All the editions contain uniquely valuable information and were meant to build upon each other, requiring a holistic approach to the old materials: take what matters and use it.

I don't blame your players for balking at the old materials. The first editor that volunteered to help with my big project had never picked up a WoD book in xis life, and when he signed up I asked xim to read enough of the W20 corebook to grasp how to make a character. After struggling with the material for a week, they returned and said, "I'll be honest. That's almost a hundred pages. I'm not reading all that." And I don't blame them. And I don't know if you noticed, but W20 also includes no tools for Storytellers to construct game chronicles. Indeed, no 20th-anniversary edition book across all the splats really does. Since the writing team at PDX didn't use any book other than x20 to construct W5, that only further deepened the reality that Storytellers have been completely forgotten. All Meat, no Potatoes. For all the good content W20 includes, a broad number of items would be decidedly unfair to force players to wade through if you wanted to, and there's also so much of it. If you have yet to notice, the old books have laughably useless indexes, so researching and knowing which books to research to create a good game is incredibly complicated. So, you're right that your players shouldn't have to read any of the old stuff, and you shouldn't necessarily have to run a legacy game to provide a game of meaning.

Now, on to the stuff, you, the Storyteller, need to put together a bombastic chronicle. I have a bibliography of books across multiple editions that really get to the heart of the deepest lore and covers the full width and breadth of what the game has to offer. You don't need to read all these books, but having them gives you all the reference material to have a top-down overview of lore you can pull into your game world that you see fit.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse Storytellers Handbook (1994)This edition was published during a time when White Wolf was still establishing what the World of Darkness represented. It was drafted during 1st edition and came out shortly after the 2nd edition core rulebook came out, making it a hybrid that shares stats between both editions, including renown conversion guidelines between 1st and 2nd editions. You’ll find three essays and a section from it reprinted in this very book, but even those are just a fraction of the value this book offers Storytellers. Beyond what I carry over here, this book includes expanded Garou culture, setting, and enemies, dedicated sections on kinfolk and kami,  and a dedicated chapter on making talismans (fetishes). It even includes a dedicated section for 1st edition to 2nd edition renown conversion and a chapter dedicated to building a custom chronicle suited to your tabletop! Definite must-have and must-read.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Storytellers Vault Style Guide (2018)Beyond a collection of well-written tales, this book includes a chapter devoted entirely to metaplot. In that way, this section serves as a roadmap towards getting a good feel on which books across which edition may best serve you. It breaks down three different approaches to Metaplot (Passive, Reactive, and Proactive), the pathos driving each edition, and following those threads, one can more easily find which books and editions are best suited to each purpose and tailor their own Storytelling library to best suit their style accordingly.

A World of Rage (2000)

This book is indispensable for learning about the world at large where the game is set. It covers every region published and really cuts out the fat in terms of delivering setting information and systems just about anywhere you’d like to set your game.

Players Guide to Garou (2003)This one’s a home run for any table. Expanded tribe societies and unique gifts? Check. Merits and flaws and expanded fetishes? Check. MOOT MECHANICS? That’s right, check. Moots are the lifeblood of Garou society, and there are structures for this! If you ever wondered what the typical phases of a moot look like, what roles different auspices play, and what your pack of players may be doing during any given time, it’s all laid out here in plain words. Even the Ragabash has (arguably the best) role to play during these events.

Guardians of the Caerns (2000)Ever wondered what exactly werewolves do all day? Wonder no longer. Guardians of the Caerns is the sourcebook of septs and caerns, detailing the sacred places and the Garou communities that guard them. It contains information on sept offices, tribal septs, caern logistics, defensive tactics--even an in-depth look at those who must grow up strictly as Garou, the crinos-born. This is the book for anyone who wants to understand what they're fighting for. 

Book of the Wyrm (1st Edition, 1993)While acknowledging the latest edition of this book, this gives a lot more specific insight into the ins-and-outs of the Urge Wyrms and Maejlin Incarna, who have taken a faceless investment in this chronicle. Understanding the ubiquity of their influence helps to understand not just these entities themselves but also their hierarchies, as they are mirrored across each of the many heads of the Wyrm.

Book of the Wyld (2001)It includes information on the naming of spirits, stats on the Nameless, information on caern abscession, and the not-so-subtle recommendation to write a chronicle surrounding the final days of an ancient caern. It offers insights into this not-understood aspect of the Triat, including many that aren’t in print in the 20th Anniversary Edition. Some enemies come from the woods, after all.

Rage Across the Heavens (1999)

Meet the Gaian Pantheon, all the celestial incarnae to be found across the Tellurian may be found across this book, including unique powers associated with them. This also includes a chronicle encompassing the emergence of the red star Anthelios, believed to be a portent of the end times.

Hearthbound (2023)

That's right, ya girl wrote a cross-edition book this year, and I highly recommend it! This is a good answer for players looking for a drop-in solution to confront the systemic issues in the lore directly in-game. The problematic features of the Garou nation were always meant to be confronted by the tabletop, and this sourcebook offers a turnkey approach to doing just that. It details many of those issues up-front and lays bare many of the not-so-pleasant aspects of the Garou Nation in plain English, including several story seeds on how to work this new tribe into any chronicle.

Lastly, on language and tabletop terminology. It's best to treat U****a and W*****o as tribes separate from the Galestalkers and Ghost Council. They are different enough that you can't easily move the names over and call them such. That said, they are named after things considered extremely inappropriate to use in a tabletop setting, so I recommend presenting them using two Conlang terms I constructed for my games. For U****a I recommend Hapil, and to rename their patron to The River Serpent. For W*****o, I recommend Kalaril, and to rename their patron to Old Windtooth.

Lastly, if you'd like to know how to scare the piss out of your players' characters, I wrote an essay on how to do just that. Good luck!

[speakergame]

Hi Rhi! Hope life's been going smoothly for you!! There's always the "what D&D class would everyone be" question that goes around but I wanted to know what kind of player you think everyone would be? (i.e. who's the min maxer? Who gets super into RP? Who refuses to play, etc.)

ooooh this'll be fun

I've already done "what DnD class everyone would be" here, and "what kind of class would they play" here, but as for what kind of player they are:

Sebastian and Rory are nerds and have definitely played before, and would be up for playing again. Kana and Azalea haven't, but are willing to try.

Li and Seer it would depend on if Speaker had played before; if Speaker has, then Seer has, and so has Li if bff/crush background. Aquaintaince!Li hasn't either way. Seer would go along with it if it's what everyone else wants to do, but if she hasn't played before she'd be a little timid at first.

Bff/crush!Li likewise would go along with it, but I think it would take a lot of convincing for aquaintance!Li to play as an adult. They just don't know any of you well enough for that yet (unless you let them DM)

But assuming you can convince them to play, Li is the kind of player that thinks outside the box. They read all the rules so they know the best way to bend them. They're the type of player to make an axe machine gun character. or ask if an enemy counts as a "location" for spells like Conjure Water or Heat Wave.

Seer loves! to play! support classes! If you ever need a cleric, or a bard, or a support wizard or tank, she's your girl. Terrible at dealing damage, but can heal from hell to breakfast. Uses spells and items in ways not necessarily intended, but for good rather than for evil like Li.

Azalea loves to RP and is fantastic at it. Her characters are always interesting and poignant and she puts a lot of effort into tying them into the world. Makes everyone cry. Takes forever on her turn in combat because there's too many damn spells and she panics a little under pressure.

Kana, on the other hand, is a bit of a murderhobo. They do enough performing in their everyday life, so in DnD they just want a big sword and something to hit with it. Except for the occasional unexpectedly heartrending RP moment.

Rory's just here for a good time. They're good at fitting into whatever kind of story the party and DM want to tell, be that hack-and-slash or theatrical-improv-plus-math. Brings a silly character to a serious campaign and a serious character to a silly campaign; somehow makes it work.

Sebastian is a Forever DM. He doesn't get to be a player very often, because he's a really good storyteller and absolutely magnetic behind the DM screen. As a player, he always tries to make characters that challenge him in some way, be that in a roleplay or tactical way. Tries to be the "lone wolf, doesn't play well in a group" guy and keeps ending up the party leader anyway.

[maridiayachtclub]

that reblog about an inhospitable dungeon sorta highlights one of the areas in which i myself feel the biggest divide with youth culture: the idea of TTRPGs primarily as a space for exploring emotionally complex stories about specific kinds of characters engaging in specific sorts of tropes. like they always had that capacity, but i feel like a lot of the people that got into the hobby in the 5E, critical role era think of TTRPGs as a storytelling medium first and a game second. which, that was kind of how things were set up, i guess. "the dice are there to tell a story" has been the line for decades and all. but now it feels like there is an expectation for personal narrative arcs, and that the campaign's primary purpose is to explore and complete those arcs; all mechanics and gameplay are in support of that goal.

i don't mind that mode of gaming, it can be fun. there's a place for it in the hobby and lots of people that enjoy it. i don't know how well-suited i am to like, facilitating it, though. it's not like i actually play a lot of games with strangers, and i'd never run a game for someone i didn't feel like i had a good fit with. but if there's "make up a guy to get mad about," there's also "make up a guy to have awkward interactions with." for me it's someone i saw making a post here that went something like this: "Oh, D&D? You mean group therapy with all my gay friends?!"

like I say "I wanna run D&D," and what I mean is "I wanna describe rooms in a dungeon and cool monsters and traps and treasure chests and have my players figure out how to defeat the Evil Wizard," and what some other people (a threatening, undefined Them) hear is "I'm gonna have all my fantasies fulfilled! I get to make up a blorbo and the GM will tell a story about them and give them a romantic sideplot and an opportunity to work through all their trauma and it'll be just like my podcasts~!"

what if someone like that shows up at my table? shit's gonna be awkward. i didn't sign up for that, but isn't that what a lot of people think is the DM's job? this isn't entirely based on speculation, either; i've had conflict with a player that felt like their storytelling expectations were not being met by the game on the table before them. it wasn't "this isn't gay enough for me," but there was a clear mismatch in expectations and it made things rough. (Thankfully, this was just a one-shot thing meant to see if a group of players got along well, so. we certainly got an answer to that!)

there's something Matt Colville said in one of his videos a few years back, about how his players characterized him as an "old school" dungeon master, and how he was trying to understand what that meant for him. i'm paraphrasing, but the answer he came up with is that, as a DM, he was only concerned with the external growth of characters. his adventures provided things for the characters to deal with and react to, and the experience and gold that allowed them to make their numbers go up and expand their worldly holdings, but it was up to the players to make a personal narrative out of their characters' experiences. i liked this interpretation; that felt like a good compromise. it is not up to the game world to provide meaning, or inspiration, or closure; you gotta find those things yourself. which you can; we gotta do that shit in the real world all the time, after all.

(disclaimer: i am just talking about -my games- that i want to and may end up running. this isn't telling anybody what they can or should do in their games. i don't feel like this sort of thing should be necessary, for a post on my blog voicing my insecurities about my relationship with the hobby at large, but i've seen the discourse! i have seen just how bad the faith can get!)

[splatoon-countdown]

Well. Should probably say some things. Now that the DLC is already out, I'm probably gonna sound a lot less professional and more chill since I feel less pressured to make this blog perfect.

Future of the blog

I've said this before but yes I am continuing this blog despite the DLC having released. If more Splatoon things are announced I will switch to counting down to them. Right now I'm slowly finishing drawing Agent Eight for 100 days, and as a reminder last day was 71. It's going to be much slower now that the DLC is released, but I WILL still post art.

Main blog

I've been keeping this under wraps for some reason (for some reason I was scared to share it) but you might've already guessed from me reblogging some art from there, but my main account is @captn3. You can find me there for stuff that wouldn't fit to be posted on this blog.

Side Order thoughts

This will be kept under the cut and any other posts with spoiler content will be tagged with #side order spoilers. Thank you all for your support and excitement for Side Order with me.

OUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEDF1SH REAL AND IN SUCH A GOOD WAY TOO DJKNFGNDKFJNGKNJDFKGKJNDF Ahem. Sorry. Side Order, at first, was disappointing to me. It felt too short. But when I realized it wasn't really over yet, and the more I played, the less disappointment I felt. Solid DLC, 8/10. I think the Agent Four fakeout was really funny, but in the moment I was really bummed out. However, you could interpret Parallel Canon as having part of Agent Four in there somewhere anyway. For my first completed run, I beat it with Agent Four's Palette, so there's some interesting storytelling going on there with Eight using Four's Palette before anyone else.. But after realizing the palettes needed to be reconfigured, I think Eight would definitely dart to fix up Pearl and Marina's palettes before anyone else. The game was really fun, and they did the gameplay loop PERFECTLY. Other singleplayer campaigns in Splatoon don't really have much replayability, but I love how not only does Side Order encourage you to replay it, even when you 100% everything you still want to play more and more. I love the story, even if it wasn't necessarily as deep as Octo Expansion, it's very charming to see Marina wanting to help Octolings like Eight with their memories, and that leading up to reuniting with her childhood friend Acht. I'll probably have more to say even after this, because as short or small as it may be compared to other things, there's still a lot going on.

[lacklusterhero747]

Sic Semper Tyrannis

In my experience, just as many TTRPG campaigns focus on war and conflict against the powers that be as focus on exploring the wild and untamed places of the world. From stories of the companions of The Inn of the Last Home in Dragonlance to the punk rock rebels and Anarchists of Shadowrun, many times the motivating force of the story is the direct fight for survival in a world that is hostile to the very people and heroes that inhabit it. It's a well tread set of story tropes that offer clearly defined goals and villains and in built sense of drama, so it's understandable why so many stories would choose to focus on these themes.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to fight those battles from the cockpit of a giant robot.

Armour Astir: Advent is a high-fantasy roleplaying game about striking back against an authority that seeks to control you. It is a game of rival pilots clashing in steel-clad Astirs, of soldiers holding their own against the odds, and of spies and diplomats twisting the world to their ends. It is not a game of careful preparation or pleasant truces; It's hard to change the world without taking a risk.

I first became aware of this game because of the excellent podcast Friends at the Table, when they played the game as part of their Road to Palisade series of games, leading up to the third season of their ongoing Divine Cycle of games. Immediately I was taken by the combination of high fantasy magic merged with the classic tropes of mecha anime that were apparent in the game as written, even if the cast was hacking the material to make fit into their more futuristic world they had built.

I felt compelled to track it down to read it for myself.

Inside the PDF, written by Briar Sovereign, I found a love letter to the Mecha Genre, drawing inspiration from such luminary series as Mobile Suit Gundam and Escaflowne, putting you in the cockpit of giant suits of armor as you stride across the battlefields of a war against an evil power. But like the series it draws heavily from, it does so with a distinct focus on the pilots inside their Astirs, rather than just focusing on the mecha and the carnage they can bring. This is a game with stakes and in interest in the relationships between people. It's a game that, as the intro to this latest season of Friends at the Table puts it, is about Empire, Revolution, Settler Colonialism, Politics, Religion, War, and the many consequences there of.

Running off of a modified version of the Powered by the Apocalypse system, Armour Astir is built on already accessible system with a distinct interest in narrative storytelling. You work together with your group to define your Authority--the oppressive power that the group of players are fighting back against--and your Cause--the group that backs and hands orders down to the player characters--and build a world around these two groups and their seemingly irreconcilable differences. From there, the players build their characters from the available playbooks--The Arcanist, The Imposter, The Paradigm, The Witch, The Captain, The Diplomat, The Artificer, and The Scout--and collectively define the Carrier--their White Base or their Normandy--from which they launch their sorties against the Authority and where they spend their downtime between missions. It's an elegant way to frame a world in conflict, and once again as I will always point out, it's a game interested in the collective construction of the world in which you're going to play, thereby creating a sense of player buy in from the jump.

Still, even as a PbtA game, AA:A still manages to bring its own novel concepts to the table.

Presumably drawing inspiration from 5e D&D, the game introduces the concept of Advantage and Disadvantage to the system. Where normally you would roll 2d6+Stat in a PbtA game, hoping to roll a 10+ and succeed without a cost, Advantage and Disadvantage allow you to roll more dice, keeping a number according to their respective rules. And they stack! If you find your self with 2 advantages, for instance, then you would roll 4d6 and keep the best 2. Or if you had 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage, you would roll 3d6 and still keep the best two as advantage outnumbers disadvantage. The only caveat is that you can never roll more than 4 dice for a move.

Then there's the idea of acting with Confidence or Desperation. Certain moves, approaches, and situations can cause you to act with either of this conditions, and they fundamentally change how the dice are read. If you're acting with Confidence in a scene, any 1 you roll on a d6 is instead treated as a 6, while acting in Desperation makes any 6 you roll instead be treated as a 1.

These two rules alone could be enough for me to really consider the game an evolution of PbtA, as using the mechanics together allows you to deeply calibrate the odds of success or failure of a given move to really match the fiction of the story your telling, but the interesting ideas don't stop there.

The game asks you to define your character by a set of Hooks, which are short phrases that define how your character acts and thinks about the world and the people around them. They're guide posts for the player, reminding them what their character is about, but they're also guide posts for the GM and for the other players. They show what kinds of situations you care about and want to be drawn into, and they can be rewritten as needed, and deepened or loosened by various rules interactions that make the hooks easier or harder to change in play. Hooks can even be sacrificed permanently, crossed off your sheet forever and buying you a new advancement for your character and the ability act immediately with Confidence as your character commits themselves to the fight and how the war has changed them.

Meanwhile, the concept of Gravity Clocks, presents an incredibly dynamic way to represent the relationships between characters. Representing the attachments you have with people and groups, these clocks are countdowns to when a relationship might be challenged, confronted, or addressed. They can be one-sided, or they can be shared between two characters, and evoked to add numerical bonuses to rolls, the clock ticking forward every time it gets used in this manner. And when the six step clock fills up, the game asks you to Redefine, Commit, or Abandon the gravity between you and the subject of the clock. Each option presents its own ramifications, in addition to allowing you to take a new advancement for your character, and I could gush about them in detail for hundreds of words more, but I think it's better to simply let the game speak for itself if you choose to read it.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly to me, is the concept of The Conflict Turn. Played out between Sorties by the player characters at the Carrier level, the Conflict turn is meant to zoom out and show the greater context of the conflict. Here players direct the broader course of the struggle by playing out Conflict Scenes, directing challenges at one another through role-played scenes, reminiscent of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by D. Vincent Baker. It allows you to shape the course of the war and the world at a truly macro scale, and depict scenes and conflicts that might otherwise get lost in a narrow focused game about a single group of pilots on a single carrier, acting on a single front in the war. It invites players to step back and look at the whole picture and really think about what two deadlocked factions can do or must do in order to win a broader conflict. And what the consequences of those actions might be.

All in all, Armour Astir is a fascinating game that takes Powered by the Apocalypse in new and interesting directions. It offers novel new mechanical concepts to the system, while also featuring the familiar Playbook driven structure. The party's Carrier and their Astirs feature a refreshing amount of build it yourself by hand customization, and the freedom to craft your own world with a conflict you and your players will care about really makes the game shine in my opinion. Not to mention it's in built focus on both the micro and macro scale aspects of the greater conflict, each in their own time, without getting so lost in the weeds of spreadsheet style attention to detail of other mecha focused games like Lancer or Battletech.

If you've ever wanted to suit up in a giant robot and take the fight to the enemy, Armour Astir: Advent is an excellent option to fulfill that narrative fantasy.

[balkanradfem]

Lindsay Ellis actively disavows and dislikes radfems. Re-evaluate yourself.

Any female public figure who cares about her physical safety will disavow radfems (with few very brave exceptions! you know who they are and what they're going thru), if I picked who I like based on who is approving of radical feminism, I'd be left with 3 women I'm allowed to like. I would absolutely hate for all female public figures to be harassed, doxxed, threatened and smear campaigned because they let out they're accepting of a group who puts women before m*n.

That being said, being a radfem is not why I love Lindsay Ellis, I loved her way before I started up my radfem beliefs. I love her because she is incredibly intelligent, witty, insightful, brave, reckless and passionate, I love her because she made media that was so iconic and educative, I watched her videos in awe even without being specifically interested in the subject! She made me interested in things I would never even bother to learn about, because she spoke of them with so much insight and knowledge, it was invigorating and irresistible! She taught me about storytelling, about how movies are made, about 3 act structure of an animated film, why film and musical directors make the kind of choices they do and what they're trying to convey. These are things I would otherwise never seek out in my life!

The thing about Lindsay is that she speaks about these subject with so much confidence and knowledge, it was easily observable that she is better equipped and better fit to speak on it than any m*n who was also trying to speak on the subject. She also has better sense of humor than any m*n on youtube. I sometimes still think of some of her one-liners in real life and burst out laughing.

She is one of the very rare women who dared to speak confidently, passionately, on a topic that is male-dominated, that is highly valued and supports a rich industry that m*n usually bank on - she dared to out-do them in every aspect of it, and be a woman online, who makes jokes, has fun, and doesn't back down when being stepped on. She presented not only a strong inspiration to any other woman wanting to speak on academic, Hollywood, movie-producing and video-essay making topic, but a threat to any m*n she proved to do it better than. For the crime of doing that, she had to be erased from youtube, and it's a loss for women above all. This does not happen to prominent m*n who make jokes on the internet - not even if they go as far as admit they're rapists and pedophiles, not even if there's a recorded history of racism, fascism, bestiality, violence. She got cancelled for a tweet that compared one movie to another, with zero ill intent or malice. The same sentence made by any m*n, would be supported and extremely well liked - and she found this to be the case too, when m*n made the same comparison, they were very well liked for it.

Cancelling Lindsay Ellis was a message to all of us, to what will happen if we relax a little and speak confidently and make money while making jokes and educative, incredible useful and passionate content online. She was one of the best on youtube and they're showing us what will happen to rest of us if we dare to be so good we pose a threat to them, and inspiration to other women.

I miss her so much. One final reason I love her is her hair. Her hair looks like a normal human hair and every single time I saw her, I felt so much better about my hair looking exactly the same. I wish every woman just came online on video with hair like that!!!! That is how it should be.

Lindsay Ellis did not deserve what she was put thru, and no woman who was put thru any of that deserved it either. I don't care if those women are in support or opposed to radical feminism, I love all women. Lindsay made me laugh and made me learn and get interested and inspired like few other women did. Her way of storytelling and putting together an essay was unique and so highly enjoyable, she was the first to do it! With her segments she did like news reports, it made me think of the old times and television and it felt so good. I am already seeing it stolen by the male youtubers. They're the only ones that benefited from the situation.

I don't want to lose any more prominent women, I want us all to defend them with all our might when they're attacked by the mob. Let's make cancelling women prohibited. Only m*n should be cancelled - and all of them should be.

[damsels-n-dice]

queer wrath jam: day two

yesterday | tomorrow | the finished game

another day, another update! first, let's talk about my progress:

finished the "choose your playbook" section

added rules about home bases + basic gameplay

added an entire section on character growth for campaign play

gave each playbook a power and a few abilities (stats)

tomorrow will be mostly focused on the character creation section, as well as fixing some of the basic gameplay rules and getting the rest of the abilities written out for each playbook.

now that's out of the way, onto the more exciting stuff...

the playbooks in 'till it kills us are about personality and storytelling more than mechanics, though they do also determine some mechanics. most importantly, they give you three things: your defining emotion, the kind of magic fueled by that emotion, and a special power. i've talked about these, as well as the playbook names & concepts, below!

>> the bogeyman

emotion: shame, magic: shadow, power: secret-keeper the idea behind this playbook is that they are ashamed of who they are, whether because of their queerness or otherwise. they develop shadow magic, to allow them to hide in darkness, and even their name is a reference to the way they view themselves as monstrous.

>> the creeping vine

emotion: self-doubt, magic: flora, power: chokehold this playbook has self-doubt that slowly grows in them, like the crawling of a vine or spreading of a fungus, until it consumes and chokes them. hence, of course, their name and power. unfortunately, they were partially inspired by hanahaki disease...

>> the drowned

emotion: sorrow, magic: water, power: acheron named in reference to the phrase "drown your sorrows", the drowned are all about sadness. their power, acheron, is named after the greek river -- associated with death and tragedy, but also healing. in their case, the acheron waters flow as magic-induced tears.

>> the gravedigger

emotion: grief, magic: earth, power: buried alive the gravedigger feels as though they're being buried by the strength of their own grief, held back by it so much that even their magic reflects the grave dirt. despite its name, though, buried alive is actually a protective power, as the gravedigger fights to stop any more deaths.

>> the grey

emotion: numbness, magic: cold, power: gaze of the abyss cold & greyness are both commonly associated with feelings of numbness and dissociation, and the name of the playbook gets the feeling across well! the power, which is a reference to the idea that staring into the abyss makes the abyss stare back.

>> the lighthouse

emotion: paranoia, magic: lightning, power: lightning strikes twice just as a lighthouse is sign of both hope and danger, the lighthouse's paranoia makes them mistrust safety. it's also a reference to their magic, lightning for the lighthouse. like them, lightning is full of frenetic energy and tends to cause a lot of collateral damage.

>> the siren

emotion: loneliness, magic: sound, power: look at me! as someone who feels like an outcast from both "normal" society and their own queer rebel groups, the siren's magic is all about making themselves heard and understood. the name references both warning sirens and the siren who lures sailors in with her song.

>> the spitfire

emotion: anger, magic: fire, power: blood boils associating anger and fire is a classic, and this was the first playbook i found a name for. the spitfire is your classic rebellious character, full of righteous (or unjustified) rage that they want to get out at the world. if they get angry enough, their blood literally boils.

>> the wisp

emotion: stress, magic: air, power: whirlwind the wisp is named mostly because of the sound of the name -- the idea that stress and anxiety make someone become small and unobtrusive. it also fits their air powers, though those are anything but small. with whirlwind, the whole room mirrors their internal chaos

[redpiperfox]

it's that time again~

Album listen-thru of Ive's Switch~

All in all, the aesthetics in color of early 2000s (bless, they didn't follow the mainstream sound of how people are categorizing early 2000s nostalgia alsdjkfhklasjdfh), the Ive elegance woven into a bright, spring album, A+, 10/10, much enjoyed!

Now song by song:

해야 (HEYA)

What a fun song~! Absolutely won me first listen, definitely has that ethereal dusky wind-in-your-hair backlit euphoria to it, riding on top of a little high-heel, chin-up confidence. Powerful and pretty, in a stunning sort of way.

Yujin's part in the second verse runs rent-free on loops through my head, and the pre-chorus to chorus Ascends, I love the little transition/nod sound between them, and the way everything bursts into the chorus-- and that even that eruption of sound still outdoes itself and explodes in the final chorus, high note overlaying and all.

Visually, what a pretty mv! Exactly the sort of thing I expected from the teasers we got, and captures a sort of aesthetic that perfectly fits and conceptualizes Ive's niche. The set reminded me of that one Twice set in Scientist, but perfectly set it in a cultural and very specific nostalgic-reminiscent mood that I absolutely adore. Pastels and clouds and all. And tying it in with the lyrics? Absolutely beautiful, love!

Accendio

I won't lie, the first line set me off a little XD Why are we talking about priests, what's going on girls lol BUT THEN-- the actual ascension in the chorus outro? Those harmonies and chord building coming out? Hello there~!

Lyrically, it perfectly encapsulates the entirety of the album, and I think the chorus achieved the perfect balance in catchy and elegant that Baddie was setting them up for last comeback. I also love that I could catch this battle between evil and good in the production before the mv dropped-- the second verse drops you straight into a basement of bad intentions, and retrospectively makes that opening line confession make so much sense. It gives the pre-chorus the desparation before the chorus comes in with it's commands-- it's spells of protection almost.

And then the mv!!!

Oh what an mv. Everytime a storytelling mv graces us, I want to put it on a pedestal and run a presidential campaign for it because THISSSS WE NEED MORE OF THISSSS~~~

I love main character Gaeul, I love the girls power up moments into Sailor Moon-esque heroines, and then battling evil versions of themselves, (shoutout to the stylists, oh, keep doing what you're doing!!) I loved all the fight sequences, I loved the quirky plot of keeping this wand safe and then losing it, I love the ambience and color of the whole story-- it supported the music so well? The fast moving parts, the scenes where we could gasp as Yujin slammed her hand into the glass and beckoned us back, the throwback into the timeline, the fight sequences~

Really well done, Ive. A beautiful mash of elegant into a fun turn-of-the-season summer comeback.

Blue Heart

Heyo, Wonyoung written beauty!

The production draws straight from the lighter parts of Accendio, in that protective but smiling, fun image, in a spell, a promise of letting you come close but never as close as you want. It fits perfectly between Ice Queen and Accendio, in a heroine protecting herself, floating just above it all, but when she drops into the mess of it in the chorus, it's fully armored and confidently winning. And I do love the verses and the ascension in the bridge where it really does feel above the clouds and touched in the pastels of a free sky, and how perfectly it contrasts with the chorus.

Lyrically, I'll let her speak for her own song, because there's something really precious and admirable about the work she put into this song (end of the article):

tldr; She writes it as a tribute to female idols in a harsh industry and the image and personality they chose to put out in comparison to their inner strength to protect themselves.

I also want to include lyric analysis by @aidollze on twitter, with a special shout out to Ms Wonyoung for her legal work in bringing down a youtuber for defamation against kpop idols:

Ice Queen

Sent me right back to Hypnosis from their full album, instant love.

Musically, the production is like a bubbling, clear and fresh bubbling spring in the verses that freezes into the chorus, sharp angles and prisitine edges. It's sea-curly hair and curious smiles over the shoulder into combed back buns under a tiara, looking down their noses, critical, moving from level playing fields to a power play.

The lyrics only supported the imagery it gave me, and even added this undertone of the daughter of Halsey's Castle, especially if coupled with Blue Heart's message, which? Gives me all the brainworms? But anyway XD

Wow

How fun~ This feels like a run through a water park or summer vacation in a theme part in the chorus, and the sit-back and reminisce breathlessly in the verses and bridge.

It's funny how the lyrics talk about being opposites but attracting so well, because it gives me that rush of planets spinning frantically and almost out of control when together in the chorus, and then throwing each other out of their orbits to observe and wonder from a distance, only to be thrown back together for the thrill of it again.

Reset

"Kiki, do you love me, are you riding--"

Sorry XD A little more in the brightly colored jungle, in the weeds and unknown of things, before that lovely little astronomically intrumental production into the chorus, where you're stuck to this fun beat, childish in it's fun, almost. I don't know! This song is somewhere between the jungle rhythm and the intergalactic kids ride! And then it finishes and drops abruptly, like it's only there to quickly pass you by before you can hop on and join.

A very fun and chill ending to a bright mini album, that leaves you feeling light!

Ive always has my attention, and if the sheer vocal talent between Liz and Yujin isn't enough, their commitment to their niche of elegance while being able to try and sort invent concepts, has me tuning in each and every time.

Would love to hear thoughts people had on this comeback or on Ive in general!!

[impzone]

For the ask game, 1, 27, and 28 for Algas?

For the OC ask game:

What’s your oc’s most irrational fear? Is there a specific reason this fear came about?

This fear is only irrational by comparison, because he has other things that are much scarier he has to deal with on a daily basis, and yet this fear still has a grip on him.

His most irrational fear is getting his hair stuck in something that moves. From the worst case of machinery, to a revolving door, drawer, or even someone else's clothes. He probably watched a news report where a woman got killed at her job because she forgot to tie her hair up tight enough, and it's quietly haunted him ever since.

27. How does your oc handle fear?

This changes a lot through his story! Also depends on if the fear being talked about is something physical (injuries, death), or social (telling his friends a big secret), or mental (coming to terms with some part of his identity he doesn't want to look at).

For physical fears, he goes from a purely flight response to facing everything head on. He'll fight back and put his all into it once he finds a technique that lets him protect himself despite being so wimpy. His bravery comes less from believing in his ability to survive and more from a "well, there's no going back now!" attitude.

For social and mental, though? He smokes and drinks about it. If he's trying to cope better he just draws a bath or stays under the shower for as long as he can.

28. What’s your favorite thing about this oc?

It's hard to explain, honestly? He's been the one character I can pick apart and dig into and still find more pieces that I enjoy. He was made for one of the first D&D campaigns I ever played in and he hasn't abandoned me since. As I've changed, he's changed with me. Every time I have an art style change he's my test run character. For any change I push, if I can still draw Algas and make him look like himself, then it's good. Even as I've lost interests in whole settings and stories, he's always stayed there, and I've always found a way to change him to fit what my current desires for storytelling are, unlike anything I've been able to do for any other OC I've made.

I hope one day I can do him justice and put him in a proper story for everyone to see.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hi! Thank you for your service, indie games always need more exposure. Would you happen to have any recs for gamebooks about fleshing out a city or more specifically having players run a tavern? I'm currently homebrewing something along those lines but always looking for more inspiration.

THEME: Tavern Games.

Thank you so much! This rec is going to mostly focus on Tavern games, and I’m going to direct you to my other city-building recommendation post, mostly because there’s so many tavern games out there!

Bragging Rights, by Yuigaron.

EXHAUSTED, YOUR PARTY ENTERS THE TAVERN. Curious patrons watch as you unload your gear and rest your weary legs. “What’ll it be”, you hear from the bar, but before you can answer, a patron shouts, “I'll buy this round, if you’ll tell us a tale.” You smile at your comrades. Surely your exploits have earned you some bragging rights; and the drinks to go with them. 

This Lasers & Feelings hack helps you tell a story about adventurers telling stories: your party will sit down in a tavern and try their best to tell a compelling story, while making rolls to determine how well they did during their adventures. This is still an adventuring game, but the adventure has happened in retrospect. If you want to run a tavern with a number of different adventuring parties, you could use a game like this one to play out their visits. A simple one-page game with just 2 stats, means that this requires little-to-no prep before you’re ready to play!

A Night at the Tavern, by Nameless Designer.

Create your tavern from the Golden Dragon Inn with its upmarket standing to the Crimson Hand with its notorious reputation and fill it with patrons from boisterous thugs to debating merchants and more. Take your party of adventurers for an evening of carousing and entertainment; interact with the patrons; participate in a variety of mini-games and earn rewards or suffer consequences as a result of your actions.

A Night at the Tavern is a tavern generator and mini-game for fantasy adventure games. This supplement can be used with any role-playing game system. This game is designed to fit into a longer campaign, including a list of prompts and events that your characters might get involved in during a night of carousing. If you want to play new characters, you can do that too! Just roll on a few random tables, and you’ve got a quick patron with a description, a detail and a mood. It looks like this game is primarily designed to be used with games like 5E, so if you want to use it for another system, you might need to home-brew a little bit, or just use the roll-tables and prompts for inspiration.

So You’re in a Tavern, by Live Real Press.

So You're in a Tavern is about telling outrageous stories about adventures that are absolutely true in every way. It uses a deck of playing cards and a few tokens to help tell the tales and determine a winner. It can be played with a group or solo.

Players take turns drawing cards to prompt for an outrageous story. As the player tells their story, other players add wagers to change the story. "I'm sorry, Sir Pantsonfire, but wasn't it a giant daisy, not a fire-breathing dragon?" The player can accept the wager and incorporate the change or deny it by adding a coin of their own.

This is another quick-to-run storytelling game about adventurers telling of their exploits, but it uses cards instead of dice to present your players with prompts. The characters are competing to tell the best story, rather than collaboratively telling a tale of adventure - which means that they’re also competing to see who gets the most coins. If you tell the best story, you win - but you also have to buy all of your friends drinks!

Better the Devil Who Serves You, by Rae Nedjadi.

You have been a Demon Lorde for hundreds, thousands of years. The armies of men and mage alike have trembled before you, begging for mercy.

You remember those days quite fondly.

As much fun as you’re having spending time with your new Master and in their lovely coffee shop, you had no idea how difficult being a Devil Butler would be! (Not that you would ever let anyone know you were having a hard time!)

This is a PbtA game about powerful creatures that serve a young witch-child who got kicked out of magic school. Your ward has always wanted to run a coffee shop, so you’re managing a business and parenting at the same time. This game is meant to be humorous and light-spirited, great for a fun session with friends.

Bar Adventurers, by BarAdventurers.

Bar Adventurers is a light-hearted and creatively stimulating TTRPG about going out for a night of drinking. Players go on an adventure, hopping from one bar to the next where they try different, wacky, and sometimes questionable alcoholic beverages. The main premise of the game is to have fun exploring and coming up with zany drinks but watch out! As a night full of drinking can bring other crazy and risky surprises…

This bar-hopping game includes rules for getting into bar-fights, regaining HP by drinking water or eating a snack, and bar-crawl based abilities. You do not die in this game - you’ve just drunk more than you can handle, and get knocked out. The game document itself is done up in bright colours and has a character sheet based off of an ID card. A great one-and-done game for players who don’t want to do anything serious.

Poutine, by The Kinematic Cafe.

This is a game about love, regret, and delicious, delicious poutine. In it, you will tell the stories of people living in a small town, their hardships, and their perseverance. It's designed for two (or more) players, and is heavily influenced by Avery Alder's A Place to F*ck Each Other, Jason Pitre's Spark, and D. Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World.

The game is centred around a small restaurant, and the people who frequent it. The restaurant is a place of confession, and perspective. Players will make, and play these people in scenes with other citizens of the town; but they will also be playing with a "third wheel", a player who represents the hardships these people face in their day to day life.

If you want to be focused on the customers who inhabit the city and frequent your tavern, I’d recommend taking a look at Poutine. The core focus of the game is on the people who make this establishment a second home - and it doesn’t have to use the in-game setting. You can make it a fantasy tavern, a futuristic cafe, or even on a space station on the final frontier. The game runs off of a “menu”, requiring the players to push their characters into personal problems so that the wait staff can help them find their way out. If you want to play a game about the small troubles of everyday life, I recommend this game.

Games I've recommended in the Past

Tavern Stories, by Matteo Sciutteri.

A Diner at the End, by Bammax Games.

Spirited Cafe, by A Couple of Drakes.