#the scrolls

[saltyfinalboss]

some more dead cells fan characters/concepts i made, this time based off of the 3 power scrolls (brutality , tactics, survival) and the idea of having minibosses to embody the scrolls.

if you play dead cells you might recognize parts of their design! (wink)

[imperatoralicia]

I get a lot of entertainment thinking about how containers are used in video games sometimes.

[obscene-beans]

IM WEEPING AGAHAHAHAHAGAHA

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

Remember the 6 year old girl who was surrounded by Israeli tanks and the red crescent couldn't reach her? Her name is Hind Hamadeh. Here you can hear the phone call her 15 year old sister, Layan Hamadeh, made with the medics. She was killed exactly a moment later including all people in the car, except for 6 year old Hind who was stuck in the car with the dead bodies of her family, Israeli tanks and IDF surrounding her, shooting, preventing anybody to reach her.

That was last night (29.1.24). Today, still nothing. The fate of Hind remains unknown.

palestine red crescent ambulance team went to rescue her yesterday evening, but they have not returned as of now. We lost contact with them about 18 hours ago, and we still remain unaware of their fate and whether they succeeded in evacuating her or not.

Please, share Hind's story as much as you can on any platform. We need to know what happened to her. Put yourself in her place, how terrified she must be. Don't scroll past this.

This is Hind.

[molags-balls]

[skeeverboy]

hi i’m a skyrim bandit my favorite hobby is keeping 12 gold in novice locked chests that i do not own a key for

[aldmerisorcery]

[bakedbeanchan]

The Gaang take another vacation at the library

[palefrogs]

RPG Elves by Dungeon Meshi's Ryoko Kui

[shiny-eyed-corvid]

going absolutely feral over this collection of items that washed up on Cornish beaches Lego Lost At Sea on twitter

[nikkiophan]

imagine u lived in elder scrolls and your khajiit friend was like "ah, come and look upon khajiit's son, a fine warrior that one will be one day, yes?" and he just shows u this

[thoughtportal]

DR ADAM LEVY ClimateAdam ROSEMARY MOSCO

[hugintheraven]

How Bethesda fixed Vampires without realizing it

So there's a LOT of takes on vampires across media, and most of them are radically different from each other. The Elder Scrolls series has an interesting version that I haven't seen anywhere else, that incidentally fixes a bunch of lore issues with vampires, and yet Bethesda hasn't ever really leaned into any of that.

So, the issue with vampires in large RPGs like Elder Scrolls games, D&D, etc, is that a world where various elements of character building are supposed to be balanced, vampires are heavy on the upside and light on meaningful drawbacks. So in Oblivion, Bethesda completely reworked their vampires, coming at it with a blank slate:

Vampirism is a 4-stage affliction, with each stage increasing the numerous benefits of being a vampire as well as the middling drawbacks. Stage 4 brings with it all humanoid NPCs recognizing you as a ravenous monster and attacking you, basically wrecking the game. And, this is the unique part, you reduce stages by drinking blood. Being a vampire is LESSENED by doing the most vampiric thing out there, it actively makes you weaker.

And this is great. From a gameplay perspective, you vanish below ground to kill zombies/robots/whatever, and you grow stronger as the dungeon goes on. But if you don't rush through it, or if it's large, you surface having ignored your hunger for several days and have to do a whole second quest to sneak into town at night and drink blood, where the only reward is to engage with the game again. It's a drawback in the gameplay sense rather than the stats sense. And it lets game designers throw the player against weak vampires in town early on, and face dungeons full of max-bloodlust monsters later once the player knows how things work.

Meanwhile, from a lore perspective this is also great. Suddenly, it's not that vampires have to be evil, it's that they have a choice. A good person who flees their family to hide in a cave is going to starve, turning into a ravenous, uncontrolled, extremely strong monster. Someone who's comfortable sneaking around town drinking blood, meanwhile? They never lose control. They walk in the sun. They're perfectly human. Or as human as anyone can be while the blood of their neighbors flows in their veins.

And Bethesda doesn't DO ANYTHING with this. People you talk to in-game just treat it as "all vampires are evil, why would you expect anything else", when they've created a world where vampire morality is so much more interesting. The few vampires who exist in civilization that you're not supposed to kill don't really discuss their condition at all. And there's plenty of evil vampires choosing to live in caves running societies of vampires, when that makes no sense compared to basically any other way of life they could set up.

Bethesda games are a masterful disaster, in this as in everything else.

[molags-balls]

Skyrim's graphics haven't aged one bit. Still beautiful in 2024.

[savaralyn2]

Ryoko Kui - RPG Elves