#together we go

[ostrichmonkey-games]

And we have a winner!

So let's talk about the TECHNOCCULSTIST, how it fits into Stampede Wasteland, and the anatomy of a class in general.

TECHNOCCULTIST

mage-priests of the Wastes. sorcerers who bargain with tech-devils. preachers who spread the impact words of the Crash Saints. +LVL when rolling with TECH: when you're dealing with logic, construction, crafting, ritual, tech-devils, magic

Technoccultists are the spellcasters of Stampede Wasteland. They're the only class who can actually cast spells due to both their connections to the Crash Saints and the tech-devils. If you have levels in Technoccultist, you get to add your level to any roll that has you dealing with anything that falls within the purview of the class.

Aesthetics

Countless charms worn across your body

Tattoos of Crash scripture scrawled on your skin

Incense emitting, heavy cloak

The mark of a tech-devil upon your brow

ABILITIES

Here's where we start to get into the meat of a class: its abilities. Currently, there's no limit to how many times you can use a class ability, though some do come with built in narrative restrictions. The Gunslinger for example has to consume a bullet (really just the gunpowder inside it) to use an ability and the Wildwander needs to have their symbiotic beast with them to access some of their abilities. The Technoccultist is a little special in that it has only two kinds of "abilities": Learn a Spell or Pledge yourself to a Crash Saint.

Learn a Spell: This ability can be taken multiple times. Each time it is taken, roll + Spells known. On a success, you are corrupted by the tech-devil you are consorting with. Gain the mark of this tech-devil in a visible location upon your body. Tradition teaches caution when consorting with the tech-devils. Proper rituals and offerings to your Saintly patron will protect you. 

Technoccultists are really the only people in the Wastes who can learn spells, and for good reason. The only things out there that can grant the power to cast spells are the tech-devils: ancient, pre-Crash AI that have been changed by the Warp. They're dangerous, powerful, and capricious. Some orders of technoccultists have half-shackled tech-devils enshrined within their monasteries. But far more common are tech-devils that wander the Wastes or inhabit ancient Crash Sites, waiting to tempt the unawares with powerful bargains. Or at least that's what the orders teach. Spells are, within the fiction, complicated. Like psychic brainworms, pieces of sacred digital code, ancient executables transmuted into something else by the psychofield of the planet. No one's entirely sure, and most folk don't ever want to find out. The full mechanics of spells are still in-progress, but they're gonna be wild. Powerful and dangerous. Though technoccultists don't have a ton of abilities compared to some of the other classes, the spells they can learn more then make up for that.

Pledge yourself to a Crash Saint: Each time this is taken, choose a new saint. Gain one minor relic or icon of the Saint. When you wield the relic or icon, roll+LVL when dealing with anything that falls within their domains.

Technoccultists are also the only class that have this level of flexibility in their "skills", effectively making them the "skill monkeys" of Stampede Wasteland. It is not easy to get bonuses to dice rolls in this game (you can lower the difficulty in other ways though)! But if you ever wanted to round out some "skills", then you can pick up some new patron Saints. How does this work in the fiction? The different orders all have slightly different theories, but the best working one is that the Crash Saints left "impressions" of themselves within the Warp, and when a technoccultist wields an icon or relic of that Saint, they can wrap those impressions of the Saint around them, effectively tapping into the powers of that Saint. Allegedly. Outside of the orders there's plenty of other ideas.

There are many Crash Saints, here are but a few.

PREREQ: Make a sacrificial offering at a notable Crash Saint holy site.

The last mechanic that each class has is their prerequisite. The prereq is something that only becomes applicable as you start gaining levels outside of character creation and want to invest some of those levels in new classes you have no levels in yet. All prereq's are entirely narrative and can form the basis for future adventures.

And that's the TECHNOCCULTIST! Of the four classes, it has a fairly unique structure, but honestly, each of the classes has their own special quirks.

If you want to know more about Stampede Wasteland, you can check out the other posts in the tag, and follow along as I continue development! It's getting decently close to being text complete, so hopefully we'll see a release in the next couple of months.

[temporalhiccup]

🌤️

🌤️Share your favorite mechanic from a game you’re working on.

So @ostrichmonkey-games and I have been working on [a yet unnamed space pirates! game], which we're designing in the more narrative OSR space (discussing my understanding of OSR/NSR/etc is a whole other thing but anyway). Suffice to say we're having a lot of fun working out the machinery of emergent narratives! I wanted to create a way for the space pirates to be able to assert some control over how the exploration procedure, or basically how the crew travels the void tides. But I wanted to keep to the grungy-spooky-cool vibes Josh and I were aiming for. Also, I wanted to draw inspiration from one of Josh's cool little tool kits: Distant, Cold, and Beautiful.

We still need to playtest this a bunch but I'm happy with what I've wrangled together and Josh helped me work out the details. I had a lot of fun running a few simple tests between us too!

I'll run us through some excerpts, if you'll indulge me!

Ritual of Desire

When you wish to do more than follow the whims of the tides and instead wish to make demands of the Void instead, it is then time to perform the Ritual of Desire

The Ritual of Desire directly interacts with your crew position, one of the building components of your space pirate. So let's take a look at the Black Terror described as:

You may die with the Void filling your veins and pouring from your eyes, but until then your hair grows long and black with the Void and your voice will break any heart.

The leading space pirate has to spend a Whisper of the Void, and all pirates must sacrifice one Hit to the ritual. This grants a starting 1d20 to the ritual. Here are the Whispers from the Black Terror section:

A drunken story spun between two old hags

A blackened skull small enough to fit in the palm

A vision of a tentacled star beast consuming a station

Additional dice depends on what the Black Terror offers to the Ritual of Desire (different crew positions grant different dice, for different narrative costs):

1d12 - Burn away a love that keeps you steady

3d6 - Receive a fear deserved and compelling

So every space pirate makes the makes their offer for the dice for the ritual. So what do you do with all that dice once you've collected them? You cast them and seek out any of the following patterns:

The Twin Daggers of Levi - A pair of dice that show the same number (Reroll any of the Exploration die once, taking any result)

The Footsteps of Drowned Jack - Two sequential numbers (Mark a second location on the map)

The Three Sisters of Dreams Past - Three dice that show the same number (Move the results of the Exploration Die by one level)

The Four Star Crossed Lovers - Anything more than four dice showing the same number (Increase the tier of the results)

The Sea Wolf Howl - At least three dice of sequential numbers (Change the results of the Exploration Die to another type within the same tier)

The Path of Prophecy - At least four dice of sequential numbers  (portal to the desire or something similar)

The God-Siblings of Chaos - If no patterns appear at all, declare exactly where you want to go. You will receive a request from the God-Siblings, and it must be fulfilled before the end of the next session. Once fulfilled, your ship and crew will be taken directly to your heart’s desire. Shirk the responsibility, and the Star-Killers will hunt you down.

And laaaaastly, I wanted to somehow incorporate the idea of younger and older stars too from Distant, Cold, and Beautiful.

The stars know when they are being watched, the ancient skies will look back and observe in turn, drawn to the bright light of hubris. Should the hungry stars be moved to entangle their light with yours, prepare yourself.

If any of the final Ritual Die is a 1-9: The younger of the stars observe you and send out a Whisper of the Void.

If any of the final Ritual Die is a 10-15: The older of the stars wish to interact with you directly, the crew will soon meet a Void Stranger.

If any of the final Ritual Die is a 16-20: The hungry stars turn their baleful eyes on you. The Keeper unlocks a Sinister Unscene.

Basically I wanted to mimic the feeling of casting runes, charm casting, and similar ideas. I also wanted to experiment with blurring the lines between play and procedure, meta and narrative. But! Most important! it's all for fun, and rolling different dice is always fun.

[a-sweeter-solarsystem]

take my hand for a moment

your objective from this point on is to survive

the election results are going to take a few days. The world is going to be very tense. I want you to take all the things you like to do to distract yourself and splurge on them. I want you to go eat your favroite foods and spend time with friends. I want you to do what you gotta do to make sure you can make it through the week.

There are people out there who want you to survive. There are people out there who are just as scared as you are.

We'll get through this. We will find a way

[anna-scribbles]

this was how my first day went btw

[enfinizatics]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[demaparbat-hp]

He truly did.

[rookanisstuff]

the victory ball

[jaybee2000]

I must not watch election coverage. Election coverage is the mind-killer. Election coverage is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will cast my vote. I will permit the result to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the election coverage has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Sorry poppy,, IT’S SECRET OF THE MIMIC TIME!!

[quixoticprince]

Desperately needed to do another shitpost and that Will Smith cock shame meme came to mind - I couldnt decide who fit who as you can see so now theres just a red and blu version lol which maybe indicates they dont quite fit the meme but shh Also kinda looks like a conspiracy board

I dunno why Scout would care so much about whether or not they stay together (they're the teams rock😩)

Cut below is me playing around with the images lol

I just thought it was funny

[augustiinee]

I need to speak my truth

Also

———

I do want to make it clear that I LOVE Neve, she’s one of my top romances after all. She is perfect and I adore her. This is no hate on her, or any cannon paring. This is just a bit of fun.

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[rorynni]

i think they just need to hug after all that

anhane ver

[fairsweetlonging]

very silly idea BUT, i love the rivalry between liu qingge and (white lotus) luo binghe, in the way that luo binghe is super jealous over liu qingge being allowed to give shen qingqiu qi transfers and go on missions with him, and liu qingge being angry over luo binghe's "inappropriate" behavior (also just poorly disguised jealousy), and them trying to sabotage each other.

liu qingge goes to mingyan for advice, asking what he can do to make shen qingqiu stop babying luo binghe. mingyan wisely says that it seems like shen-shibo feels some kind of maternal instinct towards his disciples, and if liu qingge wants his attention elsewhere, he could find something else for shen qingqiu to baby.

a week later, liu qingge shows up with a crate and gifts shen qingqiu a baby animal, a creature that's evolved to be so irresistibly cute that parents can leave their babies near villages to be raised by people (a kind of brood parasite/cuckoo situation). of course shen qingqiu adores the little creature and takes to it right away.

pros: shen qingqiu is absolutely besotted with the creature, always mentions liu qingge got it for him, and is no longer babying binghe. also, luo binghe is furiously jealous of the beast.

cons: shen qingqiu no longer has eyes for anything anymore, he has three weeks worth of administration to catch up on, two hundred tests to grade, missed every meeting, and is neglecting his duties.

result: baby beast had to leave. shen qingqiu was inconsolable and turned his maternal instincts right back on binghe. plan failed.

[cacaocheri]

they do sappy shit like this all the time

[damianito]

My favorite traumatized cat

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