#week three: fated

[ineffablyruined]

Last week's submissions definitely didn't leave me wanting! (Sorry for the bad joke, I can't control myself).

Now for this week's prompt. Thanks again for the assist in selecting a prompt, @interesting-egg!

Week Three:

Fated.

What is inevitable in the Good Omens universe? Is someone bound to always screw up? Is South Downs written in the stars? You decide!

The Rules Are Simple:

Every Friday until the Season 3 premiere, I'll post a prompt.

You will have a week to write, draw, paper craft, record, completely scrap and start from the beginning after a crisis of confidence (oh, is that just me?), and post your interpretation of the prompt.

Tag your post #IneffablePromptAThon, #IneffablePAT #Ineffable Prompt-A-Thon, and/or #IPAT. Make sure to use them on Tumblr, X, IG, and AO3 so everyone can easily find your works!

Also tag your posts and AO3 with the Week Number and the Prompt, so we can all tell which prompt your creation accompanies.

Tag me @ineffablyruined in all of your posts, too, so I can reblog!

Add your contribution to the Ineffable Prompt-A-Thon collection on AO3 for this week. Link is below!

Look for the next prompt. Rinse. Repeat.

HAVE FUN!

This is meant to be zero stress. If you can't do a week, that's completely fine! Prompt not working for you? Skip it. Going to be late? No worries at all!

It is just meant to be a fun outlet to get your creative juices flowing and keep the fandom well-fed with copious amounts of fic and fun until our Ineffable Duo makes their return to our screens (whenever that may be).

There is no length requirement, no rating requirement, no timeline requirement. It can be canon-compliant, AU, crossover, whatever tickles your fancy, as long as it's Good Omens related and incorporates the prompt. It's all Tickety-Boo!

If you want to be tagged in the posts, let me know and I'll do my best to accommodate.

Link to this week's collection:

Tags under the cut:

@naturallyteal @bumblee27 @czitara @martinsharmony @ineffable-xenanigans @dierama-mojo @lickthecowhappy

[ineffably-queer-book-lover]

Eventually the Metatron targeted Aziraphale and Crowley's bond to further his own Machiavellian agenda.

However, Fate had other ideas for two of her favourite idiots...

Well, that went down like a lead balloon. You don't mess with fated lovers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Or in other words...

There once were an angel and a demon Whom the Metatron tried to reel in. His attempts were doomed, his evil plans ruined. Fate flipped him the bird and said "Dream on!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @ineffablyruined I tried my best to come up with some LEGO-related interpretation of your prompt! And then this limerick just popped into my head, too. WTF? Hopefully it works! English isn't my native language, so please excuse my bad attempt at poetry. 😉

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also, I love Crowley's new extra long custom legs! So happy they arrived in the mail before this photo shoot. 🥰

[donutfrost]

playing around with the idea of noise form neku

[beltingblood]

i met half of the band that changed my life on the side of the street while walking to a taking back sunday concert yesterday and i will Never be over it btw 🥹

[ineffable-xenanigans]

Fated

There once was a demon named Crowley and the angel Aziraphale loved him. You could say they were fated, forever connected by the unbreakable line that conjoined them.

My contribution to week 3 of the Ineffable Prompt-A-Thon by @ineffablyruined is a double whammy: a lil' limerick and a two-page illustration.

Speaking of the illustration, this was my first time ever drawing Aziraphale, and I think it turned out quite well!

Reference image

Source: quiteunlikely.net/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=654&pid=414540

Materials

Paper: Royal Talens (Art Creation sketchbook)

Pen: Pilot (G-Tec-C4)

Markers: Copic Sketch (BG70, BG71*, BG72, BG75, Y11, Y15, Y26, R00, R22, R24, R29)

* Please note: BG71 is not an actual Copic color, it's a custom blend I made from BG70 and BG72 ink)

[needtobehisprettyboy]

Wanna make another headcanon/scene analysis post 😋😋

[moomoorare]

﹏𓊝﹏﹏ 𓆝*̥˚ -ˋˏ• ༻𓇼༺ •ˎˊ- 𓆝*̥˚﹏𓊝﹏

Exhale Inhale 🫧 - Scales of Fate AU

Art I made from a small moment in chapter 1: Crawl under the earth (to feel the hunger and thirst).

· · ── 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞𓆝 ˎˊ- ⋆·˚ ༘ *

Chapter One Summary :

On the second day of festivities, the Knights and their Queen visit the dry side of the city.

They eat out and enjoy a look around the festival food stands and small stage shows, they roam the city.

A sense of dread juxtaposes the joy of the event.

.˚₊‧༉︶︶︶︶( 𓆉 𖦹*ੈ‧ 𓇼 ₊˚ 𓆡 )︶︶︶︶༉‧₊˚.

[milanosbitch]

tiger mountain peasant song 2.3x2.3 inches on watercolor paper

“I don’t know what I have done, I’m turning myself into a demon.”

[iamthemaestro]

if I had a nickel for every time either I or my brother-in-arms was in only 18th century underclothes while fixing our breeches in the passenger seat on the way to a reenactment I would have two nickels which is not a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice

[nowis-scales]

Rating: Mature Audiences

General Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Fandoms: Fire Emblem Fates

Relationships: Shiro & Ryoma, Shiro & Felicia, Felicia/Ryoma

Additional Tags: Deeprealms, Family Drama, Family Bonding, Bad Parenting, Fix-It of Sorts, Childhood Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff & Angst, Happy Endings, Revelation Route, Character Study, Fates’ characters’ bad parenting but from a humanized and resolution-focused perspective

Story Chapter Count: 2/?

Story Summary: Shiro Santori, or Prince Shinonome Masahide?

Shiro's parents lied about his identity to protect him. They lied with noble intentions. It doesn't change the fact that, for Shiro, his whole life is gone, and in its place is a new set of responsibilities as the future Crown Prince of Hoshido. Navigating his new life will already be hard enough, but with the relationship between him and his parents dashed to pieces, he has no idea where to turn. Through battles, explorations of the past, and time spent together as a real family, Shiro may discover that while there is no excuse for such harsh lies, that doesn't mean there is no explanation for their choices... and the ugly feelings on both sides still have strong roots in love for one another.

Shiro may not know who he is, but as it turns out, both his parents are still working on figuring that out for themselves, too.

[Read it on AO3.]

(Note: Due to potential threat of AI-scraping from Tumblr, I have opted to publish the actual text content of this fic only on AO3. Thank you for your understanding.)

[dirtyoldmanhole]

(gacha shit) fates won hall of form revival with BOTH brave!cam and f!f!corrin??? hell ye

[greasydumbfuck]

frank and his stupid girlfriend he hates

[thryth-gaming]

My "Home" Games

So, I've since realized this term is a bit confusing because it has since been used to differentiate on-camera Actual Plays from private games. But I started using it because I was unsatisfied with the typical concept of the "favorite" game.

Basically, I have four games that I will always return to if given a chance. These are:

Fate Core

Scion 2e (Storypath)

City of Mist

Monster of the Week

I really can't choose between these four games as to which I enjoy more. However, some people may have noticed that I don't recommend them equally. So here's why Monster of the Week is the game I recommend the most.

Fate Core

Fate Core is one of the more recent variations of the Fate system which descended from FUDGE and first appeared in specific games like Spirit of the Century or Dresden Files RPG. It is a narrative game and uses the Aspects from FUDGE, a mechanic which has influenced a lot of narrative games ever since. It can and has been adjusted to hit a large number of genres with a large collection of much varied official release content, the majority of which is available Pay-What-You-Want, and a very easy to work with open license for making third party material.

However, Fate Core is very much a toolkit system. This means that the base rules are meant to be modded so that you can hit the exact gameplay flavor you're hoping for. This means that a GM will be faced with making a fair amount of homebrewing mechanics to match desired narrative. That mentioned vast library of sample worlds does help as you can borrow mechanics from any of a number of existing world books to make your world, but it still requires some work.

On top of this, as one of the earlier narrative games, it has some rough spots in mechanics and, most glaringly, a lot of tables struggle with getting the Fate Point economy flowing at just the right level. This can cause the game to underperform. This is because the metacurrency of Fate Points generally requires the GM and players to actively engage with it by experiencing problems as a result of the down side of their Aspects. A common story I've been told is that tables will just RP their negative aspects without being encouraged to, which is fine because the game allows for giving Fate Points for that, but forget that it is a thing they should get Fate Points for. More recent narrative games have answered this problem by including purely game play ways for the metacurrency to refill so it isn't entirely dependent on players and GMs remembering to do it.

So, that brings me to the following for Fate Core

Very low buy-in cost, most of the material can be purchased for low cost or gotten for free.

Lots of support and examples.

High flexibility

High GM campaign prep required (session prep is pretty easy though)

The mechanics takes a bit of a re-working some player's approaches to gaming.

Scion 2e

A roleplaying game where you can play a hero with a spark of divinity in a modern day setting where the supernatural is public and all myths are true, especially the contradictory ones. Yup, sign me up. I am always up for this genre of game play. You got a lots of cases of "Jus' Folks" supernaturals alongside the heroes and where magic is a simple part of life.

Also, the Storypath system is a great mix of narrative and tactical. It scratches my desire to do character builds and doesn't require me to perform absurd mathematical gymnastics in order to get exactly the flavor I want for my character. The stunt system is great and seems to take inspiration from Green Ronin's AGE game's stunt point mechanics, but the gem is Enhancements and Scale.

Enhancements range from +1 to +5, with +4 and +5 only possible to reach with supernatural abilities. These are bonus successes that only apply to your roll if you have rolled at least one success on the dice. This keeps the dice relevant, as compared to Scion 1e where eventually bonus successes reached a point that dice just didn't matter anymore. The cap on enhancements would keep the power bound within a certain power level if this wasn't then match with the Scale mechanic which allows the characters to be the demigod or superhero they're meant to be.

The default setting makes some assumptions about the world but also explains how you can adjust these to your desire. For example, I generally ignore the whole idea of the war between gods and titans. So this is neither a good nor bad bit.

The big downside to this game is that the financial buy-in to get into the game is pretty significant. At minimum to play the game you need both Origin and Hero to have all the basic rules you need to play the game at its best. You can play Origin for a good long while and have fun, but it has very limited advancement and scaling, so you're eventually going to want to move on to Hero. Demigod and God are significantly different gameplay feels and you may never end up reaching that level and still be fully satisfied, so you don't need those, but they do have extra Pantheons and ideas about the world setting.

Accompanying this is that the supplements of the game are rather hit and miss. Mysteries of the World, Saints and Monsters, Demigod, God, and Titanmachy are definitely worth a purpose. However, Dragon, Masks of the Mythos, and a few others are sort of middling. Dragon and Masks in particular feel over-engineered and fiddly.

High buy-in cost

Minimum 2 book requirement

Varying supplement quality

Variable gameplay flavor from social to combat

Amazing flavor

Excellent mix of narrative and tactical mechanics

City of Mist

City of Mist is a noir superhero game where you play people who are empowered by their connection with a story (or multiple stories in the case of one of my PCs). This Mythos has a desire to relive itself on an epic scale and will empower your character to do just that. For example, the Little Match Girl mythos will seek to relive her story of deprivation, delusion, and death by exposure and if not anchored by a human will, will spread this concept throughout all of society.

It is a game descended from Powered by the Apocalypse but the extent of its changes are such that I feel that it is its own thing. It still uses the 2d6, but where it uses Fate Aspect-like "tags" instead of the common range of usually 5 stats and the combination of four themebooks instead of a single playbook makes it incredibly different.

The themebook mechanics does make City of Mist perhaps the best mechanics for doing character development out of any game I have ever played. The themebooks are meant to grow in effectiveness and versatility but also to be lost and replaced, granting experience based on the strength of the replaced theme. This process has a pacing controlled almost entirely by the player with dice-based changes well sign-posted as risks so they will never come as a surprise. You can have your character change as much or as little, as fast or as slow as you want. There is also a built in reset option for characters that don't want to retire their character but do want to go back to an entirely fresh sheet.

In addition, the Iceberg approach to planning stories and campaigns is exceptional and it has some truly great advice on how to manage spotlight between players to make sure nobody is recommended. The publishers have also started to make other games based on this system but I do not believe there is an open license as of yet, so for now the only Written in the Mist games (yes, I just made that up) we're getting are going to com out of Son of Oak Games.

However, the mechanics are a bit intricate. In my opinion they are not over-designed or extraneous and move fluidly once you're used to them but they can take a bit of getting used to. Also, while it was originally a single book, the publisher found that it was too large a book to allow for efficient publishing so it was split into two books. This puts its financial buy-in at similar levels to Scion 2e. There are some supplements, Shadows and Showdowns is especially good providing new themebooks to use, but I believe most add setting elements, example cases, and example characters.

Somewhat high buy-in cost

Minimum two book requirement

Somewhat complex rules that do work well after a brief learning curve.

Excellent character development mechanics.

Such flavor.

Monster of the Week

Of the Powered by the Apocalypse games not created by the original designers of the system, Maguey and Vincent Baker, this is the game that most understands both the limits and strengths of the PbtA system. It is a very straightforward and simple systems that knows exactly what it is and what it is here to do. And this self-awareness has allowed it to grow in ways a lot of other PbtA games struggle to do so (without becoming something entirely different at least).

As long as a story fits within the framework of investigative action horror, Monster of the Week can do it. The playbooks represent story arcs for the character drawn from recognizable shows and books like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Dresden Files, Evil Dead, Penny Dreadful, and even Scooby Doo.

The hunters are able and encouraged to borrow from other playbooks to fill out their personal character build and each move is also an element of the character's story.

To date, all of the supplements have been excellent, and I'm going to say that the new supplements co-authored by myself and Marek Golonka are set to fit that mold. Also, essentially, the supplements do not change the game to such a degree that they become absolutely necessary to playing the game the way some supplements have become in other's game (a certain witch's cauldron for instance). If the only book you own is the Monster of the Week corebook (I suggest the Hardcover edition as it includes some optional rules from Tome of Mysteries) you have everything you need for an excellent game.

I highly recommend each of the supplements but even once you have them, you won't always need Team playbooks and you won't always want to be playing in one of the other world settings of Codex of Worlds. If you get the Hardcover edition of the Corebook you'll already have a lot of the optional rules from Tome of Mysteries, but that book will still benefit you in the form of its more than 20 pre-made mysteries, several advice essays on running the game, and four hunter playbooks: The Searcher, The Hex, The Gumshoe, and The Pararomantic.

The downside of this game is that you're not always going to want to do investigative action horror as a game premise. If I want something that allows for slice of life, then Fate would be the best followed by Scion 2e and City of Mist. Similarly if I want the game to be more about supernatural politics than fighting monsters. The game CAN do politics and slice of life well, but once those become the central focus of a campaign you may want to switch to a different system.

Low to Average financial buy-in

Lots of support

Excellent supplements

Accessible rules

Really needs to be the specific genre of investigative action horror.

[hotterknife]

Does anyone want to talk about Cabaret on the West End starring Alan Cumming and Jane Horrocks and directed by Sam Mendes in 1993. Or Cabaret directed by Bob Fosse starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in 1972. Or perhaps The Berlin Stories (Goodbye to Berlin) by Christopher Isherwood, the book the original musical (1966) is based on. Anyone

[treecakes]

LOOK AT THEM!! they match my nyanko-sensei watering globes :)

[marigoldwriter]

Saul: By the Good Goddess... this, is so...

Beatrix: Weird. I know, not even with me he was like that.

Andreas: *Attentively playing tea party with his granddaughters*