#(it wanted me to go to the underdark. which i figured would progress the story so i was trying to find lae’zel’s cr��che while we’re here??)

[j-esbian]

see the problem with all of the puzzles in bg3 is like. sometimes the player (me) is stupid. and at least in a real dnd game you might get the dm to take pity on you

#the number of ‘’walkthroughs’’ that i’ve found that don’t actually. help #they tell you the map coordinates or whatever. what about if i cannot physically find what you’re talking about AT THOSE COORDINATES #or cannot figure out how to get to those coordinates (like when i spent three days trying to find karlach) #i’m in hell. actually still having a very hard time getting invested and like. not rly enjoying this game lmao #I AM PLAYING ON EXPLORER MODE AND SOMEONE GOES DOWN IN ALMOST EVERY COMBAT #also just. open world syndrome a little bit #too many quests that apparently i can’t actually move forward in yet. and too much open space #making me feel like. i need to go explore and grind when i just want to finish the quests i already have good lord #idrc about exploring every corner of the map. at this point??? #tried going into the mountain pass and it was like ‘hey you’re really low level. reconsider <3’ and im like #literally WHAT is there to do for me here #(it wanted me to go to the underdark. which i figured would progress the story so i was trying to find lae’zel’s crèche while we’re here??) #also on a non gameplay note #inSANE that all of the questlog items for daughter of darkness list her and i having interactions that We Did Not #got to act 2 and she’s like ‘hey i worship shar btw. this is supposed to be a reveal’ but like. the quest log told me that immediately?? #was i not supposed to read that?? she never told me that she wanted to join the justiciars. i never gave her the idol. #but it said all of those happened??? #maybe i’m biased bc my first save was trying to play as her but it REALLY feels like they’re pushing her to be the main character #like. kinda sucks how she’s the only companion you can check in with and say ‘how do you think we’re doing’ #and these fucking controls #why are the items hit boxes so weird. my cursor is a centimeter away and yet it still highlights something #the label isn’t actually next to the thing it’s describing so holding the alt key does nothing to show me where it is #god forbid you try to point at something through an open door #the fucking. camera angles. impossible to see what i’m doing or where i’m going because the trees and walls and shit keep getting in the way #straight up not having a good time #but this was a lot of money and i’ve heard it picks up #when tho #also the fact that i rly like wyll and he’s got like. nothing. id heard he has less content than other origins but #didn’t realize it was to a noticeable extent #maybe it’ll pick up and give him more to talk about once i save his dad. please god

[noblecrumpet-dorkvision]

Need Help Deciding on a D&D Character

Edit: I made a Twitter poll to help decide: https://twitter.com/noblecrumpet/status/1144389611763961856

As my Tomb of Annihilation campaign is nearing its end (they are exploring level 4 of the Tomb now), I have been offered the opportunity of a lifetime for a DM: to actually play in a game instead of DM-ing it!

The problem is, I have three banger character concepts and no clue which to play. Since I have a lot of followers that can weigh in, I figured I would present them to you guys to help me decide. Each has at least one friendly NPC and one rival/villain NPC in their backstory and a character arc for maximum involvement in the story. Let me know which one sounds the most interesting or exciting to play because I like all of these dudes equally.

The setting is Forgotten Realms, but not the Sword Coast, and I think our team comp has two different barbarians and two other unknown characters. All three of my ideas are spellcasters so I’m not as concerned that I will be going against party comp.

Character 1: Dain, the Undermage

Character: Duergar Slime Sorcerer (homebrewed) focused on dealing a lot of Acid damage.

Appearance: Dain has ash-colored skin with a dirty red beard turned yellow in places from contact with acid. His forehead is magically branded with a column of three dark violet eye symbols rising from his brow. He wears a conglomeration of found and scavenged clothing scraps that form into robes, using bones for ornamentation and clasps. He wears a dark cowl to hide the sorcerous mark on his forehead. His spells all have a visual effect involving green ooze or slime.

Character Arc: Once he understands what heroic comradery is like, or if someone risks their life to save his, he will go from a selfish and greedy miser to someone willing to share his ambitions and to risk his own life for his new friends.

Backstory: Dain was once a proud brewer in a duergar kingdom called Blackmount, a subterranean mountain citadel ruled by Gabrid Grayrune. Brewing is an especially rare and almost taboo art since strong alcohols will cause duergar’s psionic powers to go awry. He lived with his wife, Azntryd.

One day, an aboleth named Thuuldukod took control of a good number of the duergar in the kingdom and spirited them away to its lair. Somehow the aboleth’s transformative slime and Dain’s innate psionic powers awakened a latent form of sorcery within him. He gained power over slimes, acid, and ooze and was also able to break free from Thuuldukod’s control. After freeing some others, they were able to overcome the aboleth and bury it beneath a pile of rock.

   Upon returning to Blackmount, the duergar took in the other freed duergar that survived, but banished Dain. His awakened power marked him with three purple eye symbols on his forehead, and the duergar believed this proved he was somehow still under the aboleth’s control. He left his life and his wife Azntryd behind. Angered by this treatment, he left to wallow in the filthier regions of the Underdark with his newfound powers, going slightly mad as he wondered if he was truly the one in control of his magic.

   Adventurers came by and tried to slay him, thinking the raving duergar was a common monster, but he overcame them. This battle caused him to rethink his priorities and once he noticed the wealth these heroes had accumulated, decided to act on his duergar greed and become a “hero” himself. His ultimate goal is to create his own kingdom to replace the one he lost.

Character 2: Klak, the Dungeon Delver

Character: Kobold Artificer (Artillerist) with a focus on exploration and utility.

Appearance: Klak sports red-grey scaled skin with orange eyes. As an artificer, he is always weighed down with lots of equipment, but thankfully has been able to design a haversack that can hold many of his things despite their weight. His artifacts are primarily made of stonework with glowing crimson runes, including his artillerist turret which grows from nearby stone to attack. The energy of his magic is red with lots of Kirby dots.

Character Arc: Klak is distrustful of warm-bloods but is his curiosity for history and ancient relics easily overcomes this. When he finally reunites with his crush who stayed behind when he was exiled, the only kobold or even person he ever trusted, Klak will have to choose between living in the ancient past or finding his feelings in the present.

Backstory: Klak (“Pebble” in draconic) and his kobold brethren served a green dragon named Andorax the Venom-Fang. Klak was one of the tyrant’s trap-makers. One day when mining out space for a pit trap, Klak came upon the entrance to an ancient lost tomb with magical technology and defenses. Not wanting to tell Andorax, he created a secret door in front of the tomb’s entrance and would steal away to the place when no one was looking. Slowly he began to uncover new secrets and learn how to abuse the magical items there. He even overcame some undead creatures by himself thanks to learning how to recreate a magical turret that once halted his own progress.

   After learning so many new tricks, Klak’s traps began to improve and Andorax started to take notice. He also started to notice when he went missing. Eventually, he discovered the secret entrance and filled it with poison gas while Klak was inside. Thinking quickly, Klak was able to create a gasmask and hide within a secret compartment. He couldn’t risk leaving, and knew that his kobold brethren would soon be combing the tomb for his body, so he dug and mined his way to the surface. Exhausted and running drastically low on air, he breached the ground in the wilderness nearby.

   Now Klak looks for new dungeons to delve, only stopping into town to sell treasures and buy tools and supplies. He knows a dwarven antiques merchant named Helga Goldbraid that shares new leads with him. He has joined adventuring parties before, but is wary of doing so ever since a human fighter, Amyster Bayn, betrayed him to get away with wealth and leave him to die.

   He misses one of his kobold friends whom he had a crush on, Jakryl, a crackshot crossbow sniper who presumably still works for Andorax. Klak was never able to confess his feelings for him before his escape.

Character 3: Gazmin Selunath, the Tide Princess

Character: Triton Bladesinger (elf restriction waived) with a focus on hitting people with her morningstar and blasting things with ice but with valuable utility spells in her back pocket. I imagine her as Thor’s personality, Starfire’s appearance (inverted color scheme) and the feeling of a Frank Frazetta painting.

Appearance: Big wavy green hair down to her calves, blue scaled skin, and yellow-green fins and webbing. She is tall for a triton, and has a powerful muscular build. She wears algae-stained whaleskin leather armor studded with barnacles, and a crown of spiked coral. She wields a magic morningstar whose head is a giant pearl with conical shells for spikes.

Character Arc: Gazmin is a prideful and haughty noble on a self-imposed quest to prove her worthiness to rule by slaying a great evil. However, she will never be satisfied. She has no actual desire to rule, but instead wanted to explore the surface world and its wonders. Her arc will complete once she stops lying to herself.

Backstory: Gazmin Selunath, daughter of Queen Myrthyn and King Genallus, is next in line to the throne of the triton kingdom of Seluna (which lies in a deep part of what the landlubbers call the Shining Sea). Gazmin was taught triton magic at the most prestigious magic schools and also the art of combat from the greatest triton warriors, and combines these skills into a bladesinging style she calls the Orca style. She wanted for nothing, but still realized something was missing. She didn’t feel worthy of attaining the crown and proclaimed that she had been given a task in a prophetic dream from the gods: she cannot rule Seluna until she destroys a great and terrible evil. Seeing no great evils in the kingdom, she opted to leave it and find this evil on land. Her parents gave her powerful triton relics to aid her in her quest. Then they said their goodbyes and she left in search of glory.

   Gazmin is unfamiliar with the ways and workings of the surface world. The first thing she did upon arriving was save a mountain man named Riff Bin from a group of marauding orcs. When asked where he lived that she may return him safely, he said his home was the mountain. She mistook this to mean that he was a great king who owned an entire mountain, and now offers him fealty and occasionally visits to send him tribute. Riff takes this in stride, not wanting to offend the terrifying woman who froze ten orcs solid and shattered them with her morningstar.

   Little to Gazmin’s knowledge, her jealous and treacherous younger brother Elganus has followed her to the surface world in hopes of ensuring Gazmin never returns to claim the throne he believes he deserves.

#d&d #5e #character #dungeons and dragons #character concept #character creation #backstory #duergar #triton #kobold

[plothooksinc]

Second time lucky I wrote a damn essay before I accidentally lost it (@Tumblr you could really benefit from an undo option)

Author Interview

tagged by @wrexie​

name: KJ on here, my pen name is Nekotsuki.

fandoms: Many and varied!  The ones I write for are Rurouni Kenshin, TMNT and FFVII and the ones I RP from are One Piece and Blade of the Immortal.  I’ve also dabbled in SPN and Tiger & Bunny but those fics aren’t likely to see the light of day.  I also love most things that have decently written women and uh.  Kdramas. I dabble.

where you post: ao3, tumblr and ff.net

most popular oneshot: From the review count I’m gonna guess it’s Left Unsaid, which is hilarious but yet unsurprising as it’s the one romance fic I’ve written in a field of gen.  Go figure.

most popular multi-chapter fic; favorite story you’ve written; fic you were nervous to post: Most popular and favourite is gonna be Underdark!  LMAO that one shot that wouldn’t die (working title literally that) that I thought would be about eight pages and ended up to be uh. 89.  It’s also very popular – last I checked it had the highest amount of faves on ff.net out of the whole ’03 TMNT fandom.  (Less so on AO3, but that’s where all the smut hangs out so am unsurprised tbh)

The one I was the most nervous about was my first because I’d never written to be published online before and I generally thought my writing sucked, and that’s Tanabata Jasmine.  It still…mostly holds up (though I cringe at all that fangirl Japanese, I thought everyone had to do that to be good /cry) and is fun to go back and read b/c I can see the evolution of my writing from ch1 through to ch28 as I gained more confidence.  (…and less fangirl Japanese as I went, lmao)

how you choose your titles: …it varies.  Hard to pin down.  Usually I go for one or two words that underpin the themes of the story. Misconduct was named for one particular quote in Crisis Core, Tanabata Jasmine was …named that because I had yet to realize Kaoru and her jasmine connection were entirely fanon creations and it was set at Tanabata.  The Zaibatsu Project was named on many levels  b/c it was both my weird and wacky cyberpunk project with different writing experiments and it was about a Zaibatsu that had a nefarious project going and it was originally published experimentally over at LJ (zaibatsu.livejournal.com and I gotta say I miss being able to do it like this).  Himura Kenshin’s Day Off was my crack file full of weird shit and fourth wall breakage and was an aside fro all the serious writing, title made sense ok. Black Danube was a waltz with a Man in Black. Etc etc.

 do you outline: sometimes.  Most of the time I usually go “okay here are X, Y, and Z events I want to happen and I’ll just write until I get to them” and thus write organically for the most part and end up doing a bunch of side stuff that is fun.  Stuff I’m really unsure on I’ll outline from the start.  Zaibatsu Project is outlined up to a point because I needed to figure out who all the characters were in the AU (we’re about three quarters of the way through that outline).  Legacy is outlined all the way from beginning to end, so are Desperation and Court of Miracles (both unpublished sob maybe I‘ll get to them who knows).  Tanabata Jasmine I literally just jumped in feet first and went HAH SUFFER REDHEAD and then just wrote so it made sense and Kenshin wasn’t a damsel.  Underdark had no outline.  Misconduct has no outline, but I have the original FFVII/Crisis Core canon in mind as I write which informs some events.  Etc etc.  I like writing off the cuff most times unless I am v. unsure of what I’m doing.   ...also if a chapter is mostly conversation, you can near guarantee that I sat down and wrote nothing but the script for it first so it flowed and then went back to fill out descriptors.  A different kind of outline.

 complete: Tanabata Jasmine, Underdark, and a bunch of one shots.  

 in progress: Eesh.  Misconduct, Legacy, Zaibatsu Project, Snowblind.  I need to pick up the pace goddammit, Zaibatsu is closing on 150 pages and the two main leads have yet to hold a decent conversation /sobs in cyberpunk

coming soon/not yet started: Oh sure, coming “soon”, as long as you’re an Ent.  Desperation and Court of Miracles are the only two I actively have a piece written and intend to get to at some point.  They’re both TMNT.  Desperation is a story where Leo and April team up to take on a high stakes murderous mad-scientist-run labyrinth to save their friends, and Court of Miracles is an ’07 story where the remnants of the child traffickers that Leo basically murdered his way through before the movie come to New York to take vengeance, only they don’t expect there to be more than one bizarre turtle and so they end up taking Mikey instead.  Whoops.

One day I might upload the little Nami introspective I wrote or the other two OP fics I have vaguely in mind, but as they’re vague and I already have a full load, that’s a while away.

do you accept prompts: I have in the past.  I probably will again!  If people want me to write shit, they can always fling prompts at me and if I’m sufficiently intrigued I will take it up, but given my current depressed™ white noise brain that might be quite unlikely.  Himura Kenshin’s Day Off is full of weird-ass prompts because people threw me things like “There needs to be a Toys R Us and a Battousai potato head” and “Kenshin is actually a pink and purple dragon with measles” I mean, challenge fucking accepted okok.  A lot of my oneshots are based off prompts also.

upcoming story you are most excited to write: Zaibatsu Project!  Misconduct is a close second though.

tagging (no pressure!): @eggxalted, @janedrewfinally, @columbinepurples, @winnyverse, @angeldormante, @bunnymaccool ... heck, any writers on my list, do this.  I wanna see your answers.

DO NOT DESTROY THIS ONE TUMBLR (hah I wised up and wrote this in Word first so nyah.)

#nekotsuki #fanfiction #writing