#WHERE are players finding time in their days to interact with the npcs?????????

[rocketbirdie]

i would love to enjoy everything that stardew valley has to offer but unfortunately i approach this game the same way i approach real life: avoid all social interaction and tend to my garden in belligerent silence

#people posting screenshots of their stardew valley spouses and i'm just sitting here like. #y'all have time for relationships in this game?? wtf #i feel every second of every day ticking by. and i must dedicate each and every moment to my beloved potato field. #but seriously it's lowkey distressing. like. goddammit what do you MEAN the autism still happens in-game. #HOW am i supposed to know what gifts to give? WHY do my friendships decay so fucking fast just because we haven't talked in like. two days?? #WHERE are players finding time in their days to interact with the npcs????????? #i can't relate to any of the npcs anyway! nobody shares my unhealthy obsession with agricultural economics!! i literally don't get it. #listen i know there's a wiki but #the problem is that the wiki only applies to stardew valley and not to real life. and i need a cheat sheet for real life. #don't even get me started on the multitasking hell that this game represents. goddang feels like a 50 hour work week playing this game #[I LOVE IT] #ok rant over back to your regularly scheduled pathetic rpg twunks

[zetomato]

The three states of QSMP play

I’m back for another neutral take (I know no one can be truly neutral, but I am ignoring my bias here alright? Good? Good.) linked to the QSMP! This time, with various kinds of plays on this server.

So. People talk a lot about “This one is always in RP-mode” and “This one doesn’t RP at all” etc. these days. But let’s break this down a bit, shall we?

Upon my many years of watching Minecraft server RP (aka, like 3 years, not that many but eh, they count), I’ve noticed something interesting in the way players interacted with the story line and their characters. In this analysis, I’ll focus on QSMP since it’s one server where players have said explicitly that they have “Characters” that they play. So let’s jump into this.

The first mode: Out-Of-RP (I’ll call it OORP)

This, despite what’s expected, is the least used by almost everybody on the QSMP (yes, yes, surprising for a few watchers, but let me explain). The OORP mode is one I define as: “When the Content Creator is fully out of game” This includes when anyone leaves their computer to go to the bathroom, when they mute themselves to reassure their chat that they’re doing intense RP and do not actually hate the others, when they talk about when they met in person (In Brazil, Paris, Vegas, etc). This is the mode where the things talked about are not linked at all to what would be happening right at this moment RP-wise.

The second mode: RP

This is what happens 90% of the time for most of the server. They do not have to actively be talking about their Lore, they can be building and talking to their chat about what’s happening, how the eggs are doing, what another character has said to them, etc. I define it as “When the Content Creator is playing their character”. The level of intensity varies between creators, but mostly, it is a very chill play. They sometimes are in that mode while huge Lore is happening and they aren’t super into it at the moment. They could be helping out, but they won’t react much to big events and might even distance themselves from the loudest people in the room. We saw that when BBH showed up with his amnesia RP when they got back to the server post Purgatory and Etoiles went OORP for a moment to say he was too tired to RP but still hang out with Bagi and BBH until he got too exhausted for the high-intensity of the scene and backed off. He was in RP mode when he cracked jokes and asked questions and answered Bagi’s worries, but he was way too exhausted to match the intensity of BBH. We saw that in multiple different exchanges and, yep! That’s RP still! It’s just easier to see the extravagant one when the other is more mellow, even if both are playing their characters.

The third and last mode: LORE

Alright, this one is very easy and yet I wanna describe it to be sure everyone’s on the same page. This one is “When the content creator is fully immersed and playing into his character about the events of the story.”. Now this one is tricky to distinguish from RP for some people/characters. For Philza, for exemple, when he goes into his “LORE Mode”, he changes the camera, the screen, the sounds, etc. Not all of the time, but it’s when it’s most visible. Almost everyone goes into LORE mode when something huge happens (Finding the eggs in Purgatory, meeting an important NPC, having their character Lore revealed, etc.) We saw this often during the Lore drops. When Baghera shared her Background in the federation, when Philza went to the Birdhouse, when Forever and Pac had their Happy Pills arc, when BBH played his grief when the eggs disappeared and when he came out of Purgatory… All of these were and are Lore moments which are easy to spot.

The problem with these is…

No one can watch absolutely everyone on the server. If not for the language barrier (Especially when some players’ translation breaks or when they do not put it on (that’s more of a problem considering the goal of multilingual conversation on the server)), for the sheer time needed to follow that. But this means that people will miss out on character LORE and RP for sure. People who don’t understand French will be lost when the French Content Creators mute themselves to point out something to their chat while speaking French. People who don’t understand Portuguese will be lost when watching Bagi and she starts speaking too fast to get a good translation. People who don’t understand Spanish will be lost when Mariana shows up and forget to properly set his translation after he speaks English for a while. People who don’t understand English will be lost when someone doesn’t set their translation when they start chatting around in English. And it is things that will and have happened. I know more Lore about Etoiles than some friends of mine because I don’t miss anything when he switches to French while in RP. Sometimes it's not a question of trying, it's a question of language barrier!

The real problem is actually when people start defining what constitutes the three modes by the way one or two Content Creators do them. No two have the same RP mode, the same LORE mode. Some are very intense on their RP so they go into LORE very smoothly, some are just as smooth but because both of these are more subtle. This server has a lot of people talking to each other for hours being in RP mode but since they don’t start doing LORE mode (which is more obvious), it passes over some people’s head that they are doing RP.

It’s a bit sad to follow someone for a while, following their POV, knowing how much they put into their character and how much they RP with the content they make. And then get someone who’s way more used to a brighter more obvious RP say that the creator you follow doesn’t do shit. It’s ok and expected to have many kinds! Heck! It’s great that we do! Or else the number of viewers would be lower. This way, people who like more intensive and noticeable RP and chaos can go towards the ones who give them that, and the viewers that prefer a more subtle approach where the big things are actually less noticeable, they can watch exactly that!

I won’t lie, I am enjoying the mellow side more than the energized one. I like to be able to work while I watch a stream, I’m able to when it’s two hours of building, or just people going across the map to find a dungeon. Purgatory, even while watching only one team most of the time, was way too exhausting for me, even if I had fun watching it and gosh every big event was nerve wracking, it was too much for me. I was glad to take a few days break for a while and, I will say it, BBH’s impressive intensive amnesia RP, viewed from Etoiles’ POV I was watching, drained me way faster than anything else. And you know what? That’s great! Because it means that people who love that kind of intensity are getting FED and that’s so cool.

Bottom line

I am begging for people to respect the fact that no two people have the same kind of play and RP. I have absolutely nothing against any personal preference since I know that what I enjoy makes other people fully bored, but words matter. No one out there should be going around saying “This CC’s RP suck! They don’t even do any!” when it just isn’t true. “This CC’s RP is way too subtle for me, I don’t even feel like they do any” THAT is a good take. If I agree or not with it, it doesn’t matter, but people are getting way too comfortable sharing their personal feelings as facts and that is why we slide into toxicity and anger towards each other. I personally don’t vibe with BBH’s more intense RP. And? It’s far from being bad RP, it’s just not my cup of tea!

TL:DR;

There are 3 Modes: Out-Of-RP which is fully meta, RP which is being in-character, and LORE which is being very intensively in character linked to events. No two streamers on the QSMP have the same level of intensity in RP and LORE and that is perfectly fine. Just don’t spread your preferences as if they were facts, it’s what feeds toxic exchanges and it can be fixed really easily by changing how you bring things to the table.

Thanks for taking time to read!

#QSMP #Another Ze rant #It's so easy to see where people start getting angry at each other #I am begging you #I tell kids way too often to use the 'I like' and 'I don't like' when they talk about anything with strong feelings #I do believe Tumblr can be better than Twitter and rant without attacking everyone who like what they don't

[florencetypemaniacs]

▪︎ Links:

☛ {[DEMO]} | Chapters 1-3

{[MOODBOARDS]}

☛ {CHARATER PORTRAITS: ["Book Club"], [Part 1]}

☛ {SHORT/SIDE STORIES: [Marcel's Past], [Trick or Treat], [Suprise Party]}

☛ {SPICY SHORT STORIES: [Nurse Owen]}

My Inner Sins is an interactive fiction game series being made with SugarCube (previously Harlow) on Twine. It has an urban supernatural theme where you will discover things about yourself, your family, and maybe even the hidden truth about your town. In this tale, you will meet new people, but beware; you don't know who you can trust or who has a knife to your back. 

☛ Content Warning: My Inner Sins is an interactive fiction game for players 16 and older that focuses mostly on NPC interactions and character growth. It will feature violent scenes, sexual themes, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and strong language and is meant for older audiences.

☛ About the Author: Hello, I go by Florence (she/her), and this is my first interactive fiction; however, this world has been in my mind since I was thirteen and watched Twilight for the first time. I plan for this to be a three-book series; however, I am a full-time college student. If you want to support me, then please send me words of encouragement via Tumblr or Itch.io. I want to make a series out of this story and the characters I created, but I want to make sure people enjoy this world and this story as much as I do. 

Four new people end up coming into town, and while that might be a little strange for the small town of Lockwood, Massachusetts, they seem to be keeping a watchful eye on you. But why should that matter? You have other things to worry about, like the feeling that you are being watched....

But everyone is welcome in Lockwood.....

Simple. Those were the words that once described your life, and you would’ve nodded your head in agreement. Your day was a never-ending cycle of the same thing. Wake up, go to work downstairs at your Aunt Zinnia's tea shop, try not to fall asleep at the cash register, sneak yourself a few muffins, go to sleep, have weird nightmares, and repeat for another day. So, it would be an understatement to say that you didn’t expect your life to be turned upside down by demons. 

While most normal family secrets are mediocre or maybe a bit surprising, those of your family, the Oleanders, are mind-blowing. You find out that your  family is best known for being monster hunters, or were until your mom fell in love with a demon, making you not only have the most profound hunter blood through your veins but also making you a cambion, a half-human, half-demon spawn. 

Now, with an ancient evil coming after you, you have demons coming back to the mortal plane once again after already dying to guard you. Will you dive headfirst into this supernatural world, or will you crumble under the pressure this new world puts on your shoulders?

▪︎ Features:

☛ Play as a male, female, or nonbinary

☛ Customize your appearance

☛ Pick your MC's first name

☛ Pursue romance and/or friendship with 6 different characters.

☛ Have wholesome moments with the characters and maybe even babysit a seer.

☛ Discover lasting romances or friendships with the champions of the seven hells.

☛ Define and refine relationships with a variety of characters, including friends, family, or dream demons.

☛ Decide how you will choose a skill from stealth, knowledge, athletics, or charisma.

☛ Play matchmaker

☛ Name your cat familiar, pick their breed, and personality!

☛ Shape your MC’s future and some of their past

💙 Lust

☛ Rosemary “Rosie” Brown | F | 5’2 | 22 years old???

Rosie is a figure of beauty, with a charming personality that could make anyone swoon and a love for all things fashion. Growing up in the "Jazz Age" has equipped her with an easygoing attitude that didn't stop after she died, taking up the position of Courtesan of Lust and later joining Hell's Campions. Now, on a mission to protect you, she starts to feel again, not just lust but love.

☛ Description: Her skin is a rich cocoa brown, with dark brown eyes and thick eyelashes. She has short, black, and curly hair that is loosely styled. Very short in stature with a slender build. 

☛ Warning: Past Abusive Relationship, Trust Issues, Talk of Receiving Racism

☛ Trope: Optional Friends With Benefits to Lovers, Sworn off relationships

❤️ Wraith

☛ Owen O’Conner  | M | 6’4 | 32 years old???

With titles granted to Owen by King Alexander the third, it was no secret that he was the best fighter even with his brash attitude, in the knighthood however after his honor was stripped away after losing the person that mattered the most to Owen. His loses carried with him into the after life, becoming the Warrior of Warth and later a Hell's Campion and has swore to his master to protect you (even with your Aunt Ziannia on his "Kill List") . Will you start to become more to him than just a job?

Description: A Scottish man with freckles, pale beige skin, light blue eyes, and faint scars all over his arms and chest. He has long ginger hair, usually styled in a man bun, so it is out of the way. Tall in stature with firm muscles and broad shoulders.

☛ Warning: Past Alcohol Abuse

☛ Trope: Emotional scars, Learning to Love again, Forbidden Love

💛 Greed

☛ Marcellus “Marcel” De Rosa  | M | 5'9 | 20 years old???

Marcel always believed the gods left him; growing up on the streets, the death of his best friend, and the sickness that was killing his brother didn't leave much room for hope. However, through all the loss, Marcel had a golden heart that showed everyone kindness even if they might have not deserved such. In the afterlife, he earned the title of Advisor of Greed and later became the leader of Hell's Campions, which were sent to keep a watchful eye over you.

Description: He has a warm, olive skin tone, light brown eyes that complement his lithe build. He has curly, dark brown hair that seems to have never been touched by a brush. There are burns on his feet.

☛ Tropes: Widow/widower, Golden Boy

🧡 Gluttony

☛ Marguerite “Margaret”  Badeaux | F | 5'8 | 21 years old???

Growing up in a high-class society, it was no surprise that Margaret was unaware of the revolution until it was too late. Dying at the hands of people who saw her as "scum," she carried the burden of never knowing the harm her family had caused until Margaret crossed over. Burying her sadness under the aura of sunshine, she started helping as many people as she could in the afterlife, earning the title Healer of Gluttony and later joining the ranks of Hell's Campions sent to watch over you. Will you be Margaret's first love?

Description: She has a pale skin tone, dark blue eyes that complement her slender build. She has light brown, choppy hair. There is a horizontal scar on the back of her neck

☛ Warning: Eating Disorder

☛ Trope: First Love, Sunshine RO

🩵 Sloth

☛ Tai Huang | M | 5'6 | 20 years old???

Being the child of a Chinese immigrant during the industrial revolution, Tai learned to be determined and have a good work ethic. When a tragic accident left him taking his last breath, Tai used his direct and intelligent personality to earn the favor of the Princess of Sloth, giving him the title of Spy Master of Sloth. Keeping a watchful eye on you as the only doctor in Lockwood. What is he hiding behind those tired eyes?

Description: He has a pale skin tone and green eyes that complement his slender build. He has chin-length black hair. Scars all over his chest and legs.

☛ Warning: Talk of receiving Racism

☛ Tropes: Grumpy RO, Lover in Denial, Honesty...he is a total tsundere

💚 Envy

☛ Zane Blackburn | M | 6’1 | 25 years old

Forgotten. Alone. Anger. That's all Zane has ever felt; when everyone seemed to abandon him, Zane placed his loyalty in the being that wants you dead. Through nightmares, you are able to communicate with him. You seem to find that behind his sarcastic and crass attitude, Zane is hiding his broken past.

Description: He has a pale skin tone and gray eyes that complement his swimmer build. He has styled, platinum blonde hair that seems to have too much hair spray. There are no scars on his body.

☛ Warning: Received emotional and physical abuse through Guardian, (Early Relationship) manipulation, suicidal tendencies

☛ Tropes: Rivals, Forbidden Love, Enemies to Lovers

#interactive fiction #twine game #if game #visual novel #if wip #interactive novel #cyoa #choose your own adventure #myinnersins #My Inner Sins #twine if #twine interactive fiction #promo post #itchio #itch.io #twine #myinnersins-if #Upcoming IF #Upcoming Interactive Fiction

[esteemed-excellency]

ask game! :D

🔥 — Least favourite Master of the Bazaar? 🧍‍♂️— What stats would they provide as a companion? Where would you obtain them?

🔥 — Least favourite Master of the Bazaar?

Hiram seems pretty neutral towards the Masters, he maintains a loyal facade just because their trades are useful to him, and he needs the immortality juice. But if anything were to accidentally happen to one of them, well, what would he be able to do about it? Surely he couldn't have predicted what happened to Mr Veils or Mr Cups. Whoever was responsible for their dreadful ends must be apprehended and brought to justice, as the Law so righteously demands. But, as much as he would like to offer his help, he just can’t seem to locate the culprits, what a shame ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ He extends his most sincere condolences. (once he gets his own cider it's over for them bats)

Real answer: it's Mr Stones. Mr Stones decided to be a huge bitch about a cursed sapphire, throwing a tantrum and collapsing a mining facility on Hiram. They both ended up having the worst day ever,  stuck underground and almost drowning in Lacre. Fuck Mr Stones.

🧍‍♂️— What stats would they provide as a companion? Where would you obtain them?

Long answer because this is the perfect excuse to think about Hiram as a npc. You can meet The Soulless Socialite here and there in location based opportunities, to find out about his affairs and his story, and to call in some favours. Locations and items change as you progress his story.

He initially shows up in Velgarden, at the Singing Mandrake, at Mahogany Hall, and at the University, where he can help you raise your Scholar of the Correspondence quality. He will exchange your Bohemians or Society favours for Scraps of Incendiary Gossip, Intriguing Snippets, and Wine items. The Wine items are randomised, a rare success will get you a Cellar of Wine, but with the risk of getting Black Wings Absinthe. You can also interact with him during the party from the Polite Invitation opportunity, he increases your Talk of The Town quality but you gain Scandal.

After some time, you can find him at the Medusa’s Head, at The Blind Helmsman, in the Forgotten Quarter, and at the Shuttered Palace. He will exchange your Criminals and Docks favours for Appalling Secrets, Compromising Documents, Blackmail Material, and a number of randomised Contraband items or Souls. A rare success will get you a Magnificent Diamond or a Portfolio of Souls, increasing your Suspicion.

If you follow through with the opportunities, he'll show up in Wilmot's End, at Moloch Street, at the Magistracy of the Evenlode, and Balmoral. He'll exchange Preserved Surface Blooms, Moves in the Great Game and Uses of Villains for Comprehensive Bribes, Favours in High Places and Vienna Openings. Rare successes will get you an Epaulette Mate, a Queen's Mate, or a Stalemate. Getting the Stalemate causes a Nightmares increase, and it marks the end of his opportunities.

You can obtain The Soulless Socialite as a companion at the end of the Wilmot's End carousel, but only after you unlock The Chessboard in Parabola. You need some Great Game favours and a Vital Intelligence to unlock the companionship option, and you will get an Identity Uncovered and a Stolen Kiss (optional). He boosts Persuasive, Player of Chess, and Mithridacy, causing Scandal and Nightmares build up.

If you equip him as companion you get a new permanent opportunity card to exchange Great Game favours for Legal Documents and Favours in High Places. A rare success grants you a Night on the Town and a bottle of Laudanum. If you equip him before getting arrested you can choose between two extra options in New Newgate, in the Bribery or Contact Your Lawyer cards.

Regardless of wether you equip him or not, he causes some Infrequent cards to appear in your deck. They all describe increasingly off-putting deja-vus, giving you Tales of Terror and causing a high Nightmares build up every time you play them. They can't be discarded, unless you equip an item imbued with irrigo.

#is his npc dynamic unnecessarily convoluted? yes. will you be able to get a lot of cool items? also yes. #will all that scandal and nigtmares be worth it? debatable. have fun :D #regarding the first answer: coincidentally the polycule choose different ambitions so all the masters deaths exist at the same time for us #our headcanon is short of two masters. looking forward to increase that number! #hiram hargrave #oc asks #no beta rip all eventual typos as usual 🫡 #my writing

[justasunflowerseed]

I have so many ideas for a creative project that I don't know where to start, like my brain keeps coming up with ideas and concepts and stops halfway when it gets to actually writing it down and trying, so....

PLEASE HELP ME CHOOSE WHAT PROJECT TO WORK ON 🙏

I will start to actively work on whatever wins the poll, and will constantly update every weekend on my blog, I can't promise any quality or fast progression, some of these are projects in areas I have 0 experience in, so just vote for whatever you think sounds the most interesting ig, but please vote so I'll have something to do!

I don't have a preference for any of these, that's why I'm asking tumblr!

no results option, choose something, please I have no idea what to do

if any of these sound interesting or confusing, there are explanations under the cut:

~•°•~.~•°•~.~•°•~

JEWISH MINECRAFT

either a client side mod or a plugin for Minecraft server that add Jewish elements to the game, main concept I have thought of:

kashrut laws, the mod will keep track of the kashrut of you, your tools, and your food (meat/dairy/parveh/non-kosher). for example: your sword starts as kosher parveh. you kill a cow - your sword is now kosher for meat and you have a kosher raw meat. you then kill a pig with the sword, your sword is now not kosher and you have a non-kosher raw pig meat. you then kill a cow with the sword, you have a non-kosher raw meat. you cook and eat the kosher meat, you get a kosher(meat) status for 3 in-game hours, you then drink a bucket of milk, the status changes to not-kosher. idk how to make your tools kosher again yet.

a tracker of in-game Minecraft days, whenever it gets to the evening of every 6/7 days (friday evening), Shabbat will start, indicated by some sort of pop-up. using any of your tools on shabbat will turn them non-kosher, villager trading will either be turned off or there will be a warning not to trade with them, and same thing with every working station + crafting table. building and breaking blocks with your hands is allowed, so will crafting from your inventory (unless it's food), farming will cause the resulting crops to not be kosher. Shabbat will end at nightfall of the 7th day.

my experience: Ive never made a Minecraft mod before, but I have experience programming in Java, so it can't be that hard to to at least some of these.

TIME LOOP GAME

a mystery game where you relive the same day over and over again, with no information saved between runs except the player's understanding of the world. the goal is to find out what causes the time loop and break it. loosly inspired by kindergarten, undertale, and a certain b movie that I don't know the name of.

I don't know how to explain the visuals I'm imagining, but it will be a mostly 2d plane you walk on, and interacting with NPCs will open a virtual novel type screen.

you'll have a "clock" at the top left corner, each action during the day will cost a certain amount of time (a few minutes to a few hours), the game will be balanced to give plenty of rooms for mistakes as to not make it stressful, and since every time loop is the exact same, making a mistake will only send you to the start of the day, where you can attempt the same thing again. (and if there are repetitive aspects like idk mini games there would probably be an option to skip them if you already completed it in a previous loop, that's the only thing the game will keep track of ig)

there's only so much you can do it one day, and certain things will require the player to possess information from previous loops, and so runs will differ and evolve as time goes on, there will also be bonus "routes" to learn more about the world and the characters in it.

idk what the mystery is yet! the story is very early stages.

my experience: I have no fucking clue how to use unity, I made a flappy bird and a platformer without levels, but I still haven't fogured out how OOP works with this thing, andy brain can't figure out how tf you make stuff like dialogue. it would probably take me a long time to make a working prototype.

UNDERTALE TIME LOOP FANGAME

this is THE EXACT SAME PROJECT AS THE ABOVE ONE, but as an Undertale fangame instead of an original story. and I do have a concept for this one!

you play as Frisk in the pacifist ending (NOT after a genocide route, pure pacifist with potentially multiple neutrals) (also not as the player controlling Frisk), living out your happy ending. it's been a few years, you've grown, humanity mostly accepted monsters, and the underground is mostly abandoned as monsters moved to the surface. You've lost your powers a long time ago, not that anyone knows about them, and you have no reason to use them again anyway, you have everything you've ever wanted. but one thing is missing: Flowey.

his determination has been deteriorating over the past few months, and it's gotten harder and harder for him to move. he started spending all his time at Chara's grave in the underground, and you visit him once in a while.

the game is during his final day, you find out, the last bits of determination leave his body and he turns back into a regular flower. but you're determined to save him, and so, your powers return, and you're able to go back in time to the start of the day, and start reliving it over and over, looking for a way to save him. a happy ending means for everyone.

it might be a bit more story heavy, it might even have Frisk being an actual character as they're free from the player's control, but it's the same concept and same mechanics.

my experience: same limitations as making an original game, but I also don't know how good I'd be at keeping the characters in-character for this.

ROTTMNT AU COMIC

this is a project I've already started on my shared tmnt sideblog with @remitiras. it only has 1 post! 😭

I have the second part halfway done on my computer, but I didn't like the writing for parts of it and couldn't find the motivation to properly rewrite it yet, so it's been on hiatus for 4-5 months.

I made the concept while having a hyperfixation on rottmnt, and Cass Apocalyptic Series specifically. since then I've moved on and I'm not as invested in the fandom or the story, but it's still something I wanna finish someday. it has a mostly finished outline, and a large collection of plot ideas, it's one of my most detailed creative projects to date! this would be a good practice for making comics and stories.

my experience: again, it already has a chapter, although pretty ugly in hindsight, the wip second chapter has a much better panel layout. I've never made a real comic before, but me and reminhave a pretty good grasp of the rottmnt characters and they're kinda helping me write it.

CARTOON CONCEPT FROM WHEN I WAS 12

despite having the idea for 8 years, I can't for the life of me decide on a name for it. lmao. the concept is as follows:

do you know these stories where the main character is living a normal and sad life until they find out their word actually has some sort of magic and an entire society of magic people living (mostly) in secret from regular humans? Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Gravity Falls, Danny Phantom, Fairly OddParents, I can't think of any other examples rn. these usually (but not always) accompany a chosen one plot of the regular person finding out or growing to be the savior of the group.

now what if, multiple of these stories happened at the same time, in the same world, to all of your best friends?

that's the concept of my story! in it, the main character, Sapphire, moves to a new small town, and slowly finds out each one of her new friends are the main character of their own magical/paranormal journey.

I have uploaded some concept art to my blog already: one, two, three.

if this win, I will not make it into a full fledged indie cartoon bye myself (lol)

rather, I will write down all of my ideas and make more concept art, for characters and scenes. and will share it on my blog.

my experience: this is mostly just writing down preexisting ideas I never had time to write before, and drawing concepts I didn't have the motivation for. so I have the experience for this.

COMIC OF CHARACTER TRAPPED IN A MAGICAL LIBRARY

this is a comic I planned for practice! it's a comedy with simple colors and backgrounds so it's prerfect for practicing my comedy skills and writing episodic one-shot content. this time it has a name!

Endless Library:

the character wakes up to find herself in a library, but the bookshelves strech on to the horison and the books seem to be about the most random and wild things ever. there's no exit in sight. join in as she slowly goes insane and starts consuming the paper for substance, I swear it's not a horror story!

I already have 2.5 episodes drawn, it's a very simplified artstyle, and the background is super simple, it really got me to experiment with perspective. I keep picking it up for a week or so once every few months and I haven't touched it in almost a year, so I don't really remember more than the general plot. it will probably have ~100 short episodes? I still didn't figure out the ending.

my experience: I got a lot of indifferent to good reactions to my first chapter! so this will probably be the easiest to finish as long as I have the motivation, I also don't have to worry about experience with comics because the style is super simple.

PERSONAL PROJECTS

projects that won't be able to be shared with othwrs online :( they're fun and all but I'd just feel like they'll be a waste of time. these include:

making a hub on a new Minecraft server I joined, including multiple farms and a shared storage system. It just started so I still haven't logged in.

finishing my base on another Minecraft server, I like it hut I'm 50% of the active players.

making cute coasters for my apartment, and prettifying my apartment in general.

writing cringe low-effort fanfics for my eyes only, I will never ever share them sorry

drawing regular fanart

choosing one doesn't mean I won't do the others at all! it's just what I should focus on during my limited free time. right now I'm at a point where I can't focus on any project at all because I feel guilty ignoring the others.

also if you actually read all of this I'm sending you virtual hugs, thank you so much for actually taking interest in my unhinged ramblings 💗✨

#SeeD speaks #polls #my polls #tumblr polls #random polls #help

[venusmages]

I always love hearing about other people's D&D games and I was wondering if you had like a method for how you plan out your sessions? In a slump rn myself so looking for some inspo lol

ok so i need to get better at this again (depression made me a way more 'seat of my pants' DM) BUT i basically lay out a "timeline" of main story points the party will eventually hit, and place "questlines" there. Essentially like a tree of quests and their progression in a videogame. This is NOT always detailed by any means but it helps me get a linear view of what's going on. If you run pre-made modules, this is the book stuff. My current game started out this way before I went "I like doing this myself" and went completely off the rails.

Then I go into the main details of the questline. Stuff like where it is, if there's going to be new lore introduced, the actual contents of the quest itself and it's requirements, etc. My players and myself are big on RP, so I also try to always make sure the quest will have interest for Story or Character reasons. If it doesn't directly push the plot in a major way, will it still give the party interesting interactions with each other and npcs? Are there going to be any new threads for some of the game's mysteries?

Then I also ask what in the questline is going to play to the party's habits and strengths. I admit this is WAY looser, and again kind of wraps around into "what would be cool RP for them" - but for example; knowing an encounter with nobles will give our noble-born artificer some additional lore, since he understands the city's politics.

After that, I do sometimes "script" certain lines of NPC dialogue or location and item descriptions. Stuff I'll be narrating that I want to make sure has a certain weight to it, or to flow well. You might not need to do this if you speak succinctly, but I find my brain stutters when trying to describe scenery on the spot, so it usually helps to write it. After that I make the session from there!

For me that usually includes picking out "splash screens" for the conversation backgrounds in our game, drawing new npc portraits if I have the time (it started because some of my players have aphantasia/some former players were new, so I drew PC and NPC portraits to make RP easier to visualize - then it just became the Only Way I Want To Do It Now LOL), and making maps. I use Epic Isometric for my maps, highly recommend. I get most of my splash screens from Art Station, but I have to say obviously that's unwise if you're streaming a game. Same goes for using pre-existing art as character/NPC art -- I know myself and other artists don't care if someone uses our stuff for their home game that no one's ever gonna see. I plan to release some of my portraits in packs one day free of use though.

Here's the RP Backdrop kind of splashscreen I use in R20 (but you can make one in FVTT too, I've done it) and an Epic Iso map I threw together (the party tokens were drawn over Epic Iso assets. If you join their discord people make community edits constantly. I'm currently working on a project to color all the released decor assets)

#epic isometric #roll20 #artstation #dnd advice #dnd resources

[wuxiaphoenix]

A Few Grumps with LitRPGs

You know, one story I’d love to read would be a previously-isekai’d main character getting back to modern Earth, possibly with friends... just in time for a System Apocalypse. Cue, “Aw heck. Now what?”

Seriously, what would happen? Would the abilities they earned get shoehorned into whatever in the System sort-of fit them? Would they even get classed as human, or as NPCs? There are all kinds of potential complications for someone who’d gained special abilities and training in a more natural paradigm now forced into a game-style universe.

If the story went the way I’d like, the main character would find a way to break the System, and artificial classifications of powers and skills would go up in smoke. Because this is the key thing that gets me about System Apocalypse settings, more than gruesome means of surviving or power plays or whatever other craziness the revised world inflicts on people. Human beings are not game icons.

There’s no such thing as a level 10 plumber, a level 15 programmer, or a level 20 neurosurgeon. These are people. Individuals with varying amounts of skill and knowledge in different areas. One neurosurgeon may be excellent working on adults, but not children; another may specialize in younger patients. The amazing jazz player may be a stockbroker by day. The expert welder may go home and tie breathtakingly realistic flies for fishing. People are unique.

And the first thing Systems stories do is reduce human beings to stat menus.

I don’t like it.

Here I must admit I’ve never been much of a gamer. I’ve played RPGs, because that was the form of social interaction in various situations I was in. And I’ve always loved gamebooks, with their descriptions of characters and kingdoms, monsters and powers. I love the bits you can put into a story.

Treating a character as just a bunch of stat blocks and equipped items? Leaves me cold.

Storywise, reader-wise, I’m not sure it’s all that healthy. We use stories as examples of how to live. Or sometimes as horrible examples of, “See that? That’s stupid, or evil, or both. Don’t do that.”

A steady diet of stories where the most important thing about a person is the artificial boxes they’re put in... we have enough problems with that in real life. The human brain is used to making snap judgments of “my tribe” or “not my tribe”. Hardwiring that means living in a civilized society takes constant work and self-control, so we’re not all bashing each other over the head with clubs when that jerk took the last donut-!

We do not need to give that hardwiring any help.

As a light entertainment? Well, horror stories and first-person shooter games are things, too. But I don’t think I could write a LitRPG. It seems too crushing to characters’ humanity.

Thoughts?

#worldbuilding #litrpg #cranky #just a bit

[gascon-en-exil]

Awakening has so many "nothing characters" besides Priam, remember Chrom's father? I still find it funny one of the "Rhea bad" arguments said * Like this isn’t the “good guy blue country” we typically see in a FE game. This is Chrom’s father’s Ylisse. Which I find really hilarious to this day given how much that plot poitn was forgotten with the game entirely vindicating the prejudice against Grima worshippers and even when it was brought up, it was to talk about how Ylisse was the true victim of the crusade.

I'll be honest; I barely remember Chrom's father, or anything he did. FE13's story is already impossible to take seriously in between all the fanservice and time travel silliness and how it's all a clumsily stitched-together riff on the first three games on the series in sequence. Asking me to care about the actions of a character who never so much as appears onscreen (or even has a name?) in a game like that is entirely too much.

Of course, that does play into the broader point about FE's character writing. Like I said in response to the Bernadetta ask earlier today, gimmick character writing is inevitable in games like these, which sit awkwardly between party-based RPGs and large-scale tactical games where most/all of your units are generics. Every FE has a handful of one-note playable characters, and NPCs - or characters only ever represented as generics - are naturally going to be deemed less important by players because that's how the developers are treating them. Conservation of detail: if the author doesn't put time and effort into fleshing out a character/nation/whatever, then it logically follows that that element is not intended to be very important. The hierarchy in FE is mostly clear-cut:

Avatars > other playable characters with plot armor and/or plot relevance > non-plot-relevant PCs > named, unique NPCs who appear onscreen > NPCs who lack one or more of those traits

There's a bit of wiggle room in the middle, if you were, for example, to compare an undeveloped filler unit to the main villain. Apart from though it's a good rule to follow when handling what one might expect from a particular character. Rhea is actually a good example of how this works. Both Fódlan games treat her as more of a multipurpose tool to be brought out whenever necessary than as the impactful major character that she allegedly is. This is in large part because she's an NPC, and doesn't need to be developed in the same way (full support list and multiple endings, battle lines/interactions, activity dialogue) as even goofy bit players like Raphael or Alois. There's a whole bunch of telling and not showing when it comes to Rhea, just like with Chrom's father I suppose.

A corollary to all this is that it's the natural role of transformative fandom to expand underdeveloped and overlooked elements of canon, often in ways that the original writers never conceived or intended. However, as I noted in my discourse video, everyone in transformative fandom has their own priorities when it comes to which parts of canon they believe deserve to be expanded upon - and discourse frequently arises when contradictory desires in fandom spaces come into conflict with one another.

#Fire Emblem #Fandom discourse

[awellreadmannequin]

Gender in Games that Aren’t About Gender

Imagine for a moment that you’re ten years old. You’ve just got your hands on the latest Pokémon game and after loading it up, watching the animated intro sequence, and selecting “New Game,” you’re quickly confronted by a choice: are you a Boy or a Girl? Cut to, INTERIOR, DAY, FOUR YEARS LATER. You boot up a copy of Fallout New Vegas for the PS3 that you acquired for twenty of your hard earned Canadian dollars. You’re kinda bummed you couldn’t find a copy of Fallout 3 because you don’t yet understand how much better the game you’re about to play is than that one. You once again hit New Game, and this time you immediately get shot in the face before are once again presented with The Choice. Cut to, INTERIOR, DAY, SIX YEARS LATER (I think). You boot up a copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. You get the picture by this point. The cuts come faster now. A new Pokémon game. The Choice. An old Pokémon game on an emulator. The Choice. An old Fire Emblem Game. The Choice. Genshin Impact. The Choice. Honkai Star Rail. The Choice. Prey (2017) on three separate occasions. The Choice. In none of these games does the gender of the player character radically alter the narrative of the game. Yet, choosing a gender is both the first act of player agency as well as the first act of player expression in each game. In Pokémon, you pick your gender before you even pick a single one of the eponymous little creatures. Despite being largely irrelevant, gender is nonetheless there, right at the very beginning.

On its own, this probably says something about the importance of gender to us as players and to the societies which produced these games. The social conventions of gender are ones we navigate on a daily basis, regardless of how enthusiastic we are about them. Being gendered is the social default. We are not only forced to engage with gendered relations by circumstance, but expected to as a matter of course. Given this reality, it would probably feel odd to choose a gender at any other point in the narrative because that would then seemingly make gender contextually relevant to whatever circumstances prompt the choice. Get gender out of the way first and we can just move on from it. For the rest of the game, it becomes purely aesthetic.

This is, I think, a kind of escapism. In games that aren’t about gender that nonetheless allow you to choose the gender of your player character, gendered relations are largely disregarded in order to fulfill the fantasy of a world where gendered expectations are minimized or absent. Female Robin in FE: Awakening is just as competent a tactician, mage, and swordswoman as Male Robin. Playing as a woman in Fallout New Vegas doesn’t preclude you from the skills to role play a hard drinking boxer with a penchant for gambling. Your gender in a Pokémon game doesn’t preclude you from catching whichever Pokémon game you want nor will the NPCs generally judge you for your choice of little guys. Cynthia won’t scoff at a male Pokémon trainer with a team of exclusively adorable Pokémon nor will Saturn tell a female Pokémon trainer that guys would like her more if she didn’t only use scary Pokémon and smiled more. These worlds spare us from the worst gendered interactions of our own world. Or at least, they do so long as you’re cisgendered and heterosexual.

Let’s go back to Robin, the player character in FE: Awakening. Through the course of the story, you meet a character named Tharja who is obsessed with Robin. Tharja’s obsession has romantic overtones which do not change regardless of Robin’s gender. She seems just as interested in keeping Female Robin to herself as she does Male Robin. However, only Male Robin has the option to enter a romantic relationship with her. In fact, you cannot romance any of the female characters as the female version of the player character. Likewise, the Male protagonist is limited to only romancing female characters. While the player is given agency over Robin’s gender, they are denied agency over their sexuality. Robin is immutably heterosexual. Here, the escapist fantasy of a gender-lite world is utterly derailed if your romantic interests are not heteronormative. This leads me to question how much agency the player is actually being given when making The Choice. Am I expressing myself within the narrative and the play-space if I’m a lesbian being forced to play the role of a straight girl? That feels a little bit too close to the reality of being closeted to be escapism anymore. I love FE: Awakening, it’s easily one of my favourite games of all time. This has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, I’m not trying to say that all games that allow you to choose the gender of your character are as, let’s say, limiting as FE: Awakening. Fallout New Vegas allows you an impressive amount of freedom expression regarding gender, sexuality, and presentation. Later FE games have reluctantly added some same-sex romance options, but generally fewer M/M options than F/F ones. Pokémon is, for the most part, utterly unconcerned with romance. No, the thing I’m trying to point out is that gender is always lurking in the background of these games. While we make The Choice at the very beginning, that choice continues to define our interactions with the game and the narrative outside of the text itself. For instance, imagine going to make The Choice only to find that… there’s no option to pick your gender. After all, The Choice is always Boy or Girl. If neither of those are you, then your agency and expression as a player are immediately hamstrung. Your avatar is no longer indexed to you. Of course, not every game will explicitly say, “THIS ONE IS A MAN THAT ONE IS A WOMAN.” But gender is so deeply ingrained in our social world that they don’t have to. You can decide that your Male Robin is actually a butch lesbian who uses he/him pronouns, but the gendered signifiers of the game are such most people would look at your avatar and decide that they’re man. That head canon cannot be represented through player expression. As far as the game is concerned, that Robin is a man.

I don’t want to claim I’m being particularly novel or offering new insight into the nature of gender and games. Rather, I want to highlight some ways in which gender reasserts itself during the interactions between player and game because they illustrate how important The Choice can actually be to the experience of the game. Gender is, to borrow a phrase, a spectre haunting these games. We do not experience them divorced from gender. Instead, the degree to which gender is part of our gaming experience depends on how attuned we are to gendered relations outside the play-space. Those who, for whatever reason (usually situatedness, let’s be honest), are more readily disposed to think critically about gendered relations are more likely to encounter friction in the supposedly frictionless fantasy. However, even in cases where the player character leans more heavily towards being a character with goals, beliefs, and relationships independent of the player, the spectre of gender still looms.

This whole essay is the result of a comment on another post of mine which argued that the gender of the player character in Prey (2017) was purely cosmetic because it doesn’t change the text of the game in a meaningful way. This is technically true. The player character does all the same things and has all the same relationships. Hell, gender doesn’t even change the character’s name. They are always Morgan Yu. This was, until pretty recently, also more or less the case in Genshin Impact, a game about which I’ve written before. The player can name their character whatever they want (though they do have a canonical name mentioned in-game) and the gender of the Traveller is irrelevant to just about every story beat and relationship, with one sort of notable exception. Both Morgan and the Traveller are characters in a more robust sense that the previous games we’ve discussed. Actions Morgan takes at the behest of the player that differ from their pre-established character are accounted for in the text. The Traveller gets to make very few meaningful choices, as the player’s expression and agency are limited to extra-canonical choices like team composition and character builds (in cutscenes, the Traveller literally uses to default ‘Dull Sword’ to fight literal gods). In both games, the player character is more character than player avatar, at least as far as the narrative is concerned. Yet, in both games we are still confronted with The Choice.

Why give the player agency over Morgan or the Traveller’s gender but not, say, their appearance? Or the kind of person they used to be? Why present this choice that is seemingly irrelevant to the play experience? The simple answer is player expression. Even if both characters lean towards being actual characters, they are still the avatar for the player’s action and the expectation many gamers have is that we should have some agency over that avatar. While there may be no textual meaning influenced by The Choice, it still allows players to express something within the dialogue between game and player. My choice to play Morgan Yu as a woman or the Traveller as Lumine means something to me even if not the game. What that meaning is depends on the player, but it is inevitably informed by our lived experiences of gendered relations. I pick the female player characters because, even if the contents of their character are identical to their male counterpart, I nonetheless see myself reflected better in them. Here, we need to introduce a technical concept: distraction. For the distracted player, this is as far this relationship might go. I pick girl because I’m girl, done. I aced The Choice. However, the attentive player may find that the rest of the game is actually coloured by The Choice.

What then, do I mean when I use the term ‘distraction?”

HA YOU THOUGHT YOU’D GET THROUGH THIS ENTIRE MESS OF AN ESSAY WITHOUT ME CITING PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIAL CRITICISM? YOU THOUGHT WRONG, PUNK.

In his essay on aesthetics, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” social critic Walter Benjamin offers an account of distraction. He describes distraction first with regards to architecture:

Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception-or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished, not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation. (Benjamin 2007, 240)

Here, he argues that architecture is consumed through our tactile use of it. Buildings, especially those we have to inhabit regularly, are too large to optically perceived. Between their sheer size and their multifaceted shape, it is impossible to perceive them in their entirety. However, by moving through them, we slowly gain a habitual understanding of them which informs, in turn, how we perceive them. As an example, I move through my apartment not so much by sight but rather by muscle memory. I know where everything is, so I can navigate from the living room to the bedroom while, say, watching a Youtube video. I can navigate the space while in a state of distraction. So when Benjamin, and thus I, use the term distraction, I am referring to the specific way in which habit allows us to move through a space without consciously navigating it, thereby freeing up cognitive capacity to be distracted with something else. Got it? Good, now let’s apply this analysis to video games.

Question: can you navigate the digital space within a video game in a state of distraction? Yes. I can navigate the Team Fortress 2 map ‘2Fort’ completely in a state of distraction because I spent hundreds of hours of my precious youth wandering around it while invisible as the Spy. However, I cannot navigate all virtual spaces by habit because, like real spaces, I first need to habituate myself too them. When I talk about consuming video games in a state of distraction, I want to make it clear that I do not mean virtual spaces. I am talking about the gestalt experience of playing a video game.

For instance, when I pick up my PS4 controller, I do not need to look at the face buttons to know where the button that opens and the button that closes are. I don’t need see the X on screen and then find the X on the controller to press X. I don’t need to even be told what X does because X always opens. I see X, I know I’m opening or selecting something. This is the kind of habitual action that I can preform in a state of distraction. However, the kinds of habits we form around games are not limited to input mechanisms. We can also form mechanical and interpretive habits. When I’m playing Genshin Impact, I don’t consciously think about whether I should use a normal attack, a skill, or an ultimate when I’m in the heat of battle. Instead, the mechanical habits I’ve formed kick in and my fingers react to whatever my eyes process. The more habitual those reactions are, the leeway I have to be distracted, which allows me to free up more cognitive capacity to process things like positioning and team rotation. Interpretive habits are a bit more difficult to grasp.

First off, what do I mean by an interpretive habit in the first place? Here, Genshin is again instructive. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, look through these character splashes and try to guess what element each character is associated with:

Left to right, top to bottom (hehe): Kokomi - Hydro, Nahida - Dendro, Shenhe - Cryo, Hu Tau - Pyro, Raiden Shogun - Electro

Even without me having told you that Genshin Impact has seven elements and each one is associated with a symbol and a colour, you could probably guess which element each character is associated with. This is an interpretive habit, or heuristic. It is a method through which we can offload cognitive capacity by reflexively interpreting a sign or symbol. This has mechanical utility in so far as it gives us an idea of what a character might be mechanically useful for. Hu Tao can probably set flammable things alight, Shenhe can probably freeze water, and Kokomi can probably douse flames. That we can use these interpretive habits to such great practical effect speaks volumes outside of video games as well, but that is a story for another time (a good friend and colleague actually wrote an entire thesis on heuristics and their effect on political polarization). What is more relevant to the argument I’m (slowly) making, is that interpretive habits allow us to engage with the text of a game in a state of distraction.

When the player presented with The Choice, it acts as a kind of assurance that they are entering the frictionless gender-lite world of fantasy. However, this illusion only works on those who are either willing to be taken in by it and on those who don’t know any different. If your experience of the gender in the social world is frictionless, you can easily slip into a fantasy world where gender is completely irrelevant. Likewise, if you want to be distracted, then simply accepting The Choice at face value allows you suspend disbelief. In both cases, interpretive habits are the mechanism by which the illusion goes unchallenged. For those who are privileged enough to be ignorant of gendered social experience, those habits are formed in the real world while for the rest of us they are formed through the consumption of media. The end result is the same: we can move through the text of the game unhindered by the cognitive burden of gender.

This interpretive ignorance, willful or not, offers a negative formulation of the argument I’m trying to make. By utilizing interpretive habits to distract ourselves from the real world implications of gender, we get to experience a game in a particular way. Recall this portion of the quote from Benjamin:

Tactile appropriation is accomplished, not so much by attention as habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. (Benjamin 2007, 240)

If we transpose this logic onto games, we can replace tactile habit with interpretive ones and optical reception with how we relate to the text of the game as a whole. This is to say, the interpretive habits we employ in the process of navigating the text of the game inform the impression that the game leaves on us. If you engage with the fantasy of a frictionless gender-lite world, the impression the game leaves will be likewise gender-lite. If we accept this as the negative formulation of the argument, then the positive one would suggest that suspending that interpretive habit will allow us to view the game through the lens of gendered relations. This isn’t to say that we’re reading into the text gendered relations that are not present, but rather that our reading of the text is informed by our understanding of gendered relations in the social world.

We could end things there and move on with our lives, but I think that an illustrative examples is necessary to really drive home the point. Consider the following passage (which I wrote myself):

“I don’t think you’re listening to me, Meyer.” I’m reaching my breaking point now. “This is unsustainable—we are unsustainable. I’m ending things.”

Picture the speaker as a woman and Meyer as a man. What does, “I don’t think you’re listening to me,” mean within the gendered context of this conversation? Now picture the roles are reversed. Does ‘listening’ necessarily mean the same thing? Try it with both speaker and listener as women and the listener is in tears. Try it with a female boss, face red with rage, speaking to her male subordinate. Try it with two men, sitting on the hood of a vintage car under a moonlit sky as they both weep. The words can mean different things in different contexts even though they do not change. If I really wanted to hurt you, the reader, and myself, I’d insert an entire section on Wittgenstein and language games here. But I don’t, so I won’t.

When we ignore our experience of gendered relations, we are unable to imagine new meanings for the text of a game that can only arise out of paying attention to the context gender provides. To say that Morgan’s relationship with the female Chief Engineer Ilyushin is the same regardless of which gender the player chooses for Morgan to embody is to ignore the reality that sapphic relationships are not the same as heterosexual ones. It also means rejecting the notion that a female employer entering a relationship with a female subordinate can mean something different from a male employer doing the same. Both Morgans are the same, but they are still different insofar as who we take them to be can be shaped by our understanding of gendered relations.

While it may come off as though I’m suggesting that it is somehow morally superior to be attentive to these kinds of relations, I want to emphasize that there’s nothing inherently wrong with escapism. It is everyone’s right to tune out things things which would ruin their leisure time. However, I also want to emphasize a notion I obliquely gestured at earlier: some people ignore these kind of contexts because they are generally ignorant. Art of all kinds present us with an opportunity to engage with new perspectives as well as to actively apply our perspectives to the act of interpretation. Giving up this opportunity in the name of leisure because you’re familiar enough already thank you is one thing. It’s a whole other to, say, get all bent out of shape when someone brings up gender in the context of a game that you don’t think has any gender in it because you don’t know better. Positions of privilege imply a level of ignorance regarding the experiences of marginalization. So if a person with experiences that do not occur for you says, ‘hey, i noticed a thing!’ you should probably listen to them and give their observation a fair shake because you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

I’m not trying to take some moral high ground here, either. I am not immune to ignorance. Prey has a racially diverse cast of characters and Yu siblings who form the player character-primary antagonist dyad are both Chinese-Americans. Prey is also a game that drapes itself in an art-deco and mid-century modern aesthetic appropriate to its alternate timeline. These aesthetics are intrinsically bound up in periods of time and ideologies that were inherently racist. I’ve noticed this dissonance, but I don’t have the experience to make any meaningful observations about it. Instead, I mostly ignore it while I’m playing, allowing interpretive habits developed as a non-racialized person to guide me through the text. There is, no doubt, something that could be made of this dissonance as well as the general tendency of genre fiction to appropriate aesthetics from the past without much or any self-reflection. I am a queer woman and thus I do have relevant experiences of gendered relations that make me attentive to that aspect of the text. But, my whiteness further informs even these impression as race intersects with gender and sexuality in ways that I do not experience.

It is here that I think I want to wrap up this, uh, very long piece of writing. Where I to write a game, I probably would not force my players to make The Choice. I think its a bit of a cop out for having to deal with gender in any meaningful way and I don’t care for that as a feminist philosopher. It’s also exclusionary. My partner is non-binary and I’ve seen first hand how normative gendered expectations hurt them. However, since The Choice does exist and will continue to do so, I feel that interrogating how gender informs our readings of games that implement it can be both intellectually rewarding and fun. Doing so can help us understand our interpretive habits by consciously examining them, which is, I think, a good thing to do on occasion. It can also give us new ways of looking at characters which in turn can inform fan works and fan discussion. But at the end of the day, video games are a leisure activity for most and if you’re just looking for distraction, that’s fine too.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schoken Books, 2007.

#claire thoughts #games criticism #this isn’t copy edited because it’s late #sorry #i’m gonna eat dinner now

[sir-klauz]

Newbies who've arrived on Genshin since it blew up/started trending complaining abt the cut scenes: Is there a way to tell a player is new here without them saying they're new here?

Seasoned veteran player here since the start, you just gotta babe. Not everyone wants to know about the lore or the characters, but that doesn't make it a Bad game.

I've recently seen people complaining about being bored, yet all they focus on these days is repeating the same domains, and commissions every single day then exhaust themselves and log out after focusing only on primos and using up resin without doing all of the many other things to do in the game.

If you play it for just primo farming, or the marketed method of playing (because yes, it is designed to also convince you to spend money), it's going to become boring.

I've been playing for about 2 and a half years, most days and I get a lot out of doing ALL KINDS of things, and I certainly don't spend all that much time forcing myself to burn out doing only domains and suchlike, I like cooking actually quite a lot!

There's Genius Invokation TCG, a card game, to play either against characters or friends in The Cats Tail.

There's world exploration.

Farming ingredients, low-key relaxing activities, and beautiful scenery as well as music to enjoy in different places you visit. You can collect CDs for your Serenitea Pot.

There's your teapot world designing, where you can build your own home and customise it with so many different items, furniture, plants, and you can even raise your own garden to make farming plants quicker.

There's mini games pretty much every event, and you can access most events now with Quick Start, which is only pretty recent. You think now is annoying. Back when we were at it for ages, you simply had to finish ur damn quests. 😭

Food shopping, quick pick ups around all the cities or secret vendors around Teyvat.

Random chatting to the NPC civilians is often missed out, but you can just have pleasant conversations with them and some random ones give you presents for interacting with them.

There's flying challenges.

Check out the blacksmith and make your own weapons instead of only the crystals constantly. It can be quite nice to know you collected stuff to forge your own weapon set even if they're not the strongest weapons.

There are SOOOO many different puzzle games in every corner of the world to tackle if you want something to really stimulate your brain, plenty of which are pretty hard if you find some too easy. This unlocks their own set of rewards after, but if you enjoy a good puzzle, check out the locations of some. There are plenty in Inazuma, that's for sure.

Feeling irate but too stressed to domain? Idk, go whack some trees in the forests and farm lots of wood for building furniture in your teapot! You can convert things in there as well if you have loads of a certain item hanging around you don’t use.

There's hidden achievements. You can take the time running around, or just Google their locations. Some are fun. But it takes a break from the usual daily grind. And that’s the point, it should just be a grind unless you want to grind out a lot of reruns etc.

They also introduced fishing. Fish is hard to come by or isn't, depending on how much you swim or where you spend a lot of your time in Teyvat. Fishing added the ability to rest and catch all kinds of variety of fish. You can collect certain types, certain bait, and build up your fishing kit. It's a fun pastime for some, and feeds you if not anything else!

There's secret locations, caves, islands, gorgeous discoveries to be had in difficult to reach places but it pays off, and if you truly into Adventuring, this could be a fun kick to try getting to these special areas.

Co-op mode can be used to socialise, role-play, and hang out or help your friends, but it doesn't have to ONLY mean grinding domains together just for stuff, over and over again and again. I think the monotony and boredom have come from everyone desperately farming ALL the time against their will so they can have the best weapons or get favourite characters, and they feel there's no time to do anything else, or they actually don't have time to do anything else after all that if they work etc.

Hell, sometimes I just Zone out swimming around in the gorgeous waters in random areas and look around. I think I've enjoyed the game for so long without it losing its spark, as I've just done whatever felt good, and it's a really wonderful game playing it without stress like that. If it’s boring, or a currently uninteresting task? I give it a miss this time.

I don't have the best kit by any means, but I have lots of cool characters I love anyway. But I play it for peace and an escape, pushing to do the stuff we are tbh sometimes rushed to do.

If anyone has any more interesting alternative things to do in Genshin Impact, please add!

#genshin impact #genshin #genshin gameplay #genshin tips #genshin landscape #genshin impact community #genshin help #genshin world quest #genshin farming #genshin guide #genshin graphics #genshin impact forum #genshin impact posting #genshin posting #gi #gaming

[carecrowgames]

Yazeba Read Through #5

Hey, I skipped a day as I spent it recovering from the sun trying to evaporate my brainfluids. But delightfully I am back presenting you a reading extravaganza of .. 2 pages!

So let’s get into them, with Page 19 - Characters

Once I open page 19, seeing the Grey box with half rounded edges immediately excites me, as that seems how fiction boxes are marked. I wonder if we'll see some of the other residents this time, I would be excited to see some interactions with them. If I had to put money on someone it would prob be Hey Kid, because after they just had been introduced on page 17, i find it hard to imagine either book or reader would hold out long without seeing them some more on page. Their pure existence shouts for attention. Maybe it's an interaction between Hey Kid and Parish, considering they are the only starting residents, who haven't been introduced in fiction yet.

Ok but into the first sub chapter (?): residents! I realy love the framing of yazeba being a story that revolves around the residents and this in turn being how they are defined. Defining what a resident is within the story instead of the world seems like it prevents confusion. It also just feels consistent with how the book positions its world as seen through a storytelling perspective. More than that though, it’s simply endearing, to know that these are in a way our companions on the journey with the bed and breakfast. It makes them immediately closer to me.

This is also where exchanging characters gets introduced and oh my god, the entire concept is so fun! I got a taste for it in wanderhome (buy it at its so good oh my god, buy it now on https://possumcreekgames.com/pages/wanderhome) where it is one of the features that make the npc system so impressive to me. The traits you compose them from makes exchanging feel so natural. It helps keep characters consistent and easy to get into, while allowing the player who takes them over to not feel incredibly bound to imitating exactly what the previous player of the character did with them and instead rely on their own interpretation of the trait moves to guide them.

The fact that in this book players are encouraged to do so with the main characters, to come to understand and reinterpret them together, is incredibly exciting. I wonder what is done in the character playbook design to keep up consistency, or to help work together towards a common goal with the character, and to make it intuitive to pick them up. "It gives the character room to grow in a new way" Is such a beautiful way of putting the act of exchanging them. It highlights how it adds to the story told, making it feel like a great formulation to excite readers. Hell, it makes me want to exchange which character I play with someone right now and I haven’t even seen a playbook yet, let alone played a character.

Oh Hey, it's actually Hey Kid in the fiction block! And parish! I love that the dynamic between them so far is one of patience on parishes side, it's very heart warming and I love that there doesn't seem to be principle character tension between the residents. I had somehow expected Parish to be more annoyed by Hey Kid, so this is just the most pleasant surprise.

Apart from that, hey kid seeing themselves in Gertrudes situation in a way that delights them is so... it's such a character move, it says so much about hey kids specific view of the world and their love for the b&b. It makes me yearn to see Gertrude and Hey Kid interact in another fiction block but. If they don't, damn me if I'm not motivated to do it myself in a chapter and see what happens. This is such s tier character interaction potential dropped and they haven't even interacted yet. It already makes me appreciate the strength of these fiction blocks, not just for giving guidance for play and dropping narrative hints, but for giving you moments of character interaction and interaction potential that makes you want to write a god damn coffee shop AU, which is perfect because by god are you given the framework to play one.

Next Sub Chapter: Guests! Speaking of there seemingly not being much base tension between the residents, I can’t help but notice (my brain just somehow reminded me) that I skipped past something on Page 17: the NEFARIOUS VILLAIN Rag-and-Bones. Yet another delicious breadcrumb my dopamine hungry brain would have jumped after, back to the table of contents and directly to wherever I could read more about whoever could be a foil to these wonderful people. What a delectable thing to throw into the whole vibe of Yazebas, it both fits perfectly and changes everything in a way. Like the name and whimsical grandiosity of “nefarious villain” don’t make it seem like the character would threaten the warm vibe of the bread and breakfast, but it also introduces so much new potential into the coming scenes. You can not imagine the restraint it takes to stay on my current page.

Thinking about the residents as the main cast for the Story that is Yazebas Bed and Breakfast, It makes a lot of sense to reserve the antagonistic forces for the guests. Afterall, an individual antagonistic factor might be better reserved for an episode of a cartoon instead of a mainstay for all of them. But it also opens such potential for the chapters re-playability to consider how much introducing an antagonistic guest as a tertiary character might change their whole tone and dynamic as compared to one with a sweet and helpful one. How different might a birthday for Gertrude play out when Rag and Bones has invited themselves to the party?

Now though, reading how the book itself describes guests absolutely adds an extra dimension to them. I love the idea that their fundamental feature is that they have another home. That to them, the bed and breakfast is not the center of their world, or at least not the only center. It fits so wonderfully with the way Hey Kid understands Getrude, immediately knows to see her as having become one of the people in the bed & breakfast whos world IS the b&b. The differentiation gives such an immediate way to grasp the difference between the two and understand why it’s these 6 (7) we’re focusing on.

What I absolutely didn’t expect is that you could play several guests at once. I don’t know why, reading it it just makes sense that you would, but it sounds so cool. I love the idea of grabbing a handful of ones favorite guests, those that you want to see more off, want to give a bit more screentime, feel like might add a bit to the scene and play them all! The prospect fills me with the sort of excitement I would get from looking at a box of toys knowing I could just use multiple at once. Have you ever seen a multi-launcher for mini beyblades? Amazing feeling. Remembering the size of the list of guests in the table of contents it also just makes sense. If you have a smaller playgroup, and most scenes call for 2 of the residents you would never get to play them all.

Taking care not to let playing multible guests overshadow other Players reminds me that this – playing a large assortment of side characters - is a role a GM would usually play. Thinking about it from a GM perspective, being able to use multiple Guests also feels like a move that makes sure scenes don’t feel underpopulated. I assume (bzw vaguely remember from things seen in the past) that guests are going to be less mechanically complicated then residents – likely to be closer to kin in wanderhome then a playercharacter. So I can imagine handling multiple of them is cognitively much easier to handle then for example multiple residents and therefore allows them to fill this mass of character space much better.

I think this – the way that Yazeba transforms and maps the well-known roles and relations of ttrpgs (GMs, Players, Player Characters, NPCs, Scenes and the way it’s connected through time and space) into it’s own storytelling space, is going to be very interesting to trace as we dig deeper. I find the idea fascinating that the way Guests work, might take advantage of some of the learned GM dynamics and abilities players might bring to the table, without needing to directly put itself into conversation with them.

For now I have to say: I lied to you. I’m only doing one-page afterall, because it’s gotten realy damn late as I am writing this and I can feel my thoughts getting sloppy.

See you tomorrow as i enter page 20 .. which is still on guests.

—————

you can find my other Yazeba readthrough posts under #zeebthrough!

Preorder the game on https://possumcreekgames.com/pages/yazebas-bed-breakfast

#zeebthrough #yazeba's bed & breakfast #possum creek games #ttrpg #ttrpg community

[dreamlandsystem]

Nintendogs + Cats + You!

(a game concept for a Nintendogs release on the Switch)

Hardware:

- included with the game is a wireless microphone with a Bluetooth chip

- insert with breed info

Amiibo Compatibility:

- different amiibos award the player with themed treats and single use toys (ex: kirby car cake, inkling/octoling toy that pops, power up mushroom treats)

- using Nintendogs-specific Amiibos for the first time gives a specific dog or cat plush/figurine toy

Animal Breeds:

- starting off with 8-12 breeds, with the original 27 unlockable through friendship

- introduce 3-8 new breeds for a total of 30-35 breeds (possible suggestions: borzoi, pitbull, malamute, newfoundland, Australian cattle dog, Airedale terrier, border collie, rottweiler)

- introduce 1-2 new cat breeds (possible suggestions: sphinx cats, maine coon)

Competitions:

- bring back agility trials (for a total of 4 competition types: agility, obedience, lure coursing, and disc throw)

- new competition ideas: birding (train your dog to locate and flush out bird toys from trees and retrieve them from bodies of water), best in show (points system based on grooming, physique, and style)

- let cats learn tricks and compete in obedience trials and best in show

- remove the AR function from obedience competitions (or make it optional)

Walks and Outings:

- add swimming (at the ocean, lake, or pool)

- introduce rotating stock at BARC shops

- chance to be invited to NPC’s homes for pet play dates

- rare chance to encounter and adopt a stray dog or cat

- print shop where you can design your own accessories

- pop up shops with rare or hard-to-find items

Home Interactions:

- toy overhaul with lots of additions

- toy ideas: a puzzle toy that dispenses a treat when solved, slinky, paper airplane (single use), Poochy toy (from the Yoshi series), instruments like a kazoo, xylophone, drums, and flute

- improved home customization with more furniture placement options (including wall mounts for cats)

Grooming:

- add pet-safe dyes in fun colors

- receive a friendship bonus for brushing your pet after bathing them

- unlock Groomer with enough friendship where you can pay to have your dog bathed, brushed, and dyed

General Improvements:

- autosave after competitions and walks, after teaching new tricks, making purchases, and getting a new dog

- add an event for your pet’s “Gotcha Day” with a party hat and pet safe birthday cake

- log-in bonus (of biscuits, supplies, or toys) for playing with your pets every day

- pets have visible mood stats (anxious, restless, content, calm, excited, cheerful) which change depending on the quality of their care

Nintendo Switch Online features:

- play dates: invite other players to your house, the park, or café

- compete with other players in special competitions

- send gifts and notes to other players

- pedometer portion of the Switch Online mobile app

- community board where friends’ pets’ achievements are displayed

DLC Opportunities:

- add a few more breeds (possibly including an alien/fantasy breed)

- DLC exclusive toy pack, accessory pack, and home remodel designs

Suggested price point: $60 USD base game, $75 including DLC

#sys.txt #nintendogs #nintendogs + cats #nintendo hire us to make this game challenge #long post

[divehq]

DIVEHQ is officially OPEN for plotting !

in the honour of opening for plotting and as we wait to set an opening date for rp, please find a masterlist of ask memes to get to know our muses a little better below the cut.

please make sure to create a pinned post in which you note whether you would like to receive ask memes to ensure that everyone is informed whether they participate in the ooc discord or not (and as to not clog the dash with reblogs of this post). there is also a channel available on discord in the 'in character' section called 'ask box links' where you will be able to share a link to your inbox to show you would like to partake.

thematic headcanons:

hc + 👪 for a family-themed headcanon

hc + 🧡 for a friendship-themed headcanon

hc + 💌 for a romance-themed headcanon

hc + 💕 for a loved-themed headcanon

hc + 💔 for a headcanon about a sad experience

hc + 🤥 for a lie-themed headcanon

hc + 😶 for a headcanon about a secret they know of / keep

hc + 😴 for a sleep-themed headcanon

hc + 🌇 for a headcanon about morning- or evening rituals

hc + 🧼 for a hygiene-themed headcanon

hc + 🏠 for a home-themed headcanon

hc + 😃 for a happiness-themed headcanon

hc + 😨 for a fear-themed headcanon

hc + 🤕 for a pain-themed headcanon

hc + 🚶‍♂️ for a habit-themed headcanon

hc + 👍 for a headcanon about things they like

hc + 👎 for a headcanon about things they dislike

hc + 💪 for a sport-themed headcanon

hc + 😡 for a headcanon about something that makes them angry

hc + 👻 for a headcanon about supernatural occurrences

hc + 🥣 for a food-themed headcanon

hc + ☕ for a drink-themed headcanon

hc + 🐈 for a pet/animal-themed headcanon

hc + 🌸 for a plant-themed headcanon

hc + 🌄 for an outdoor-themed headcanon

hc + 🌍 for a travel-themed headcanon

hc + 🗡 for a weapon-themed headcanon

hc + 🎡 for a hobby-themed headcanon

hc + 🌘 for a night-themed headcanon

hc + 🌞 for a day-themed headcanon

hc + 🪐 for a universe-themed headcanon

hc + 🌂 for a weather-themed headcanon

hc + ⛄ for a season-themed headcanon

hc + 🎉 for a celebration-themed headcanon

hc + 🏆 for a goal-themed headcanon

hc + 💯 for an achievement-themed headcanon

hc + 🚬 for a headcanon about a bad habit

hc + 🎭 for an arts-/crafts-themed headcanon

hc + ✂️ for a hair-themed headcanon

hc + 👗 for a clothes-themed headcanon

hc + 💍 for a jewelry-themed headcanon

hc + 💄 for a makeup-themed headcanon

hc + 🎓 for an education-themed headcanon

hc + 📿 for a faith-themed headcanon

hc + 📱 for a media-themed headcanon

hc + 🎥 for a film/tv-themed headcanon

hc + 📔 for a reading-themed headcanon

hc + 💰 for a money-themed headcanon

hc + 💼 for a job-themed headcanon

hc + 💉 for a medical-themed headcanon

hc + 🛒 for a shopping-themed headcanon

hc + ❓ for a headcanon of the receiver's choice

music themed headcanons:

📚 a song or album your muse could write a term paper on

📣 a lyric that feels like it is specifically calling your muse out

📅 a song that calls up a very specific time and place for your muse

🩹 a song your muse wants to hear when they are feeling low

💖 a guilty pleasure song

🧼 what your muse sings in the shower

🔎 a song your muse can't stop analyzing

🥲 a song that makes your muse cry

➡️ a song that makes your muse want to move around

🧑‍🎨 a musical artist where your muse drops everything to hear their latest work

🌃 a song for night time

🌅 a song for sunrise

🥳 an album or song your muse would put on for a party

👶 a song your muse remembers enjoying in their youth, perhaps their parents, siblings or cousins were playing it a lot.

in game themed headcanons:

a. an interaction your muse had with an npc that they will never forget.

b. what mount is your muse's favourite? why?

c. what companion is your muse's favourite? why?

d. what is your muse's opinion on guilds?

e. has there been a time where your muse went out of their way to help another player?

f. has there been a time where your muse received help from another player?

g. what are the most used items in your muse's inventory?

h. are there any items your muse collects in their inventory despite not needing them?

i. where does your muse go for some alone time?

j. what are some locations in game your muse frequents regularly?

k. how does your muse feel about being stuck in the game?

l. what are some skills your muse has acquired in game they wish they had in real life?

m. what are some skills your muse wish they had in game, that they have in real life?

n. where does your muse currently reside in the game?

o. how does your muse feel about their username? what does it mean to them?

p. is your muse happy with the class they have chosen? would they have made a different choice after being stuck in the game for a while?

q. did your muse create an avatar perfectly in their image or did they add any special features (like eye colour, fairy ears, etc. )?

r. something your muse absolutely despises about the game.

s. something your muse absolutely loves about the game.

t. how far has your muse explored floor one?

u. has your muse ever run away from a battle?

v. has your muse ever stolen something from another player?

w. is there a material your muse would like to get their hands on for a future weapon?

x. is there a player your muse looks up to? and why?

y. is there a player your muse does not trust? and why?

z. what is your muse's tactic to form a connection with a mount/companion?

spooky season themed headcanons:

horror movies or silly cartoon spooks?

when does spooky season start for your muse?

favourite spooky movie?

does your muse have any halloween traditions?

earliest halloween costume your muse remembers wearing?

what was your muses costume last year?

what would this years costume have been?

does your muse enjoy carving pumpkins? what is their favourite design?

how much decorating does your muse do? describe your muse's spooky decoration/style!

favourite halloween candy?

witches, vampires or ghosts?

favourite spooky season smell?

what’s the soundtrack for your muse's fall experience?

did your muse like ghost stories as a kid? do they now?

chocolate or hard candies?

how old was your muse when they stopped trick or treating? (or are they… still? - have they ever trick or treated before?)

does your muse believe in ghosts?

diy costumes or store bought?

does your muse enjoy haunted houses?

sources: idiopathicsmile, asks-bait, resourcesofaqueen

#emberfort.update

[channelsurfer02]

I’ve been playing TOTK recently. I’m not too far in the game (finished the sky temple a few days ago) and I gotta say, I find it kind of funny that the reason many npcs from the first game act like they don’t know link despite having interacted with him previously is that they don’t recognize him with his hair down. Granted, the Doylist explanation is probably that they couldn’t account for which players did which side quests, but still, it’s kinda funny to think about how Botw/TOTK Link is apparently unrecognizable without his apparently iconic pony tail. Then again, people were assuming that this Link was going to be a different Link when his new hairstyle was shown in the trailers, so maybe it’s just a common thing. Also, side note, I did the side quest where you drive a raft to the crazy flower lady and I love how Link factor into the exchange between her and the other npcs at all. I like to think that he’s just cowering behind a crate or barrel the entire time, since this is the lady that can easily beat him within an inch of his life.

#Zelda #tears of the kingdom #funny stuff #breath of the wild #breath of the wild 2 #botw #totk #link #assorted npcs

[mosses-gate-3]

1, 2 & 7 for general, 7 for story specific, and 4, 5 & 11 for romance

Hiii, thank you so much!! Answering these for Ren because I already did some for the other two :D

(Future Moss speaking, this is a LONG one, buckle up)

1- Where can your Tav be recruited? Are they first encountered on the Nautiloid, or in the Nautiloid crash region? Or are they not recruitable until a later act?

They can first be recruited in the Nautiloid crash area and are found muttering seemingly to themselves near the second pass through the crashed ship.

2- Do the other companions have special comments or reactions upon recruiting your Tav?

Nothing in particular, just the usual suspicion. One or two of them might mention Ren talking to themselves if they're in the party when they're recruited.

7- Do they have their own personal quest that spans the course of the game? Can it take different branching paths depending on the choices the Player Character makes?

Yes!! Ren's personal quest is something I've thought a lot about and I plan on making a wiki for them eventually. It can have different branching paths that will affect the ending- no spoilers though!! The main thing you need to know is that they will have a bit of a crisis after the end of act 2 and through act 3 you can either encourage them to pursue necromancy & resurrect [REDACTED IMPORTANT NPC] (generally what i consider their bad ending), or you can encourage them to move on and find meaning in the living world (good ending).

7- What can they be found doing at the tiefling/goblin party? + 4- Do they have a special romance scene at the tiefling/goblin party?

Combining these so I can write this out properly -

Siding with the goblins will lock you out of their romance completely. They will refuse to attack the tieflings if you have them in the active party, and if you leave them at camp while raiding the grove you will have to do a series of intimidation or persuasion checks to convince them to stay. Either way their approval will drop drastically.

Tiefling party interaction:

Ren can be found tinkering with something at their desk (which is where they spend most of their time, their tent is kind of bare-bones in contrast with the clutter on and around their workspace).

Ren: Oh, hello there.

[1] Enjoying the party?

Ren: ...Not quite my scene, but it's nice that the others are having fun.

[1A] Not my scene either. Ren: Ah, really? A kindred spirit then. I'd take a night in over a party any day. Ren: Either way, I'm glad we could help these people. [to next] [1B] Really? I love parties. Ren: Oh well, to each their own. Ren: Either way, I'm glad we could help these people. [to next]

> [1A2] I couldn't just stand by while they were kicked out. > Ren: That's good to hear. The world could use more people like you. [+2 approval] > [1B2] I'm starting to regret it, myself. > Ren: ...Well, what's done is done. [-2 approval] > [1C2] It seemed like the best way to get information about the tadpoles. > Ren: Agreed. [back to questions list]

[2] What are you making?

Ren: Just a trinket, nothing important. I've missed having the chance to create things for fun rather than out of need.

[2A] I'm sure it'll turn out beautiful. Ren: Maybe I'll show you when it's done. [+1 approval] [This will start the romance] [2B] You shouldn't be wasting the supplies. Ren: ...You're probably right. Oh well. [-1 approval] [This will cancel the romance] > [to next]

[If you told them you liked parties] Ren: Anyway, I won't keep you here. Go on, be social, enjoy yourself.

[If you told them you hated parties] Ren: Anyway, I won't keep you here. Go enjoy yourself, or at least find somewhere quiet to hide.

[1] I wanted to spend the night with you.

[If you answered 2A earlier and have high approval overall]: *Roll Persuasion (dc: 7). If you fail this there will still be a scene later (in the Underdark) where you can romance them. You get +3 approval regardless.* Success - Ren: ...I'd like that. I'll meet you when the party's died down, then? Fail - Ren: Thank you, but I think I'll turn in early. Perhaps another night? [If you don't meet the criteria/have already asked someone else] Ren: Ah, no thank you.

(the other two options they just tell you goodnight)

**Side note: When playing a Ren origin run you can talk to Juniper at camp. She has special dialogue at the party if you approach her after pursuing a romance route, though this changes depending on how successful you are. Mostly she laughs and makes fun of your taste.

5- Does the romance have different branching paths, or just one route to take?

Ehh, kind of. There is of course the bad ending vs good ending route, but the romance doesn't hinge on that.

11- What are Tav’s plans for the future? Do they propose to the PC, or is marriage not something they’re interested in?

Ren's dream is to settle down somewhere and open a shop, though what they actually end up doing depends on their ending. In the necromancy route they will base their life around the resurrection quest and continue to travel around, they will ask you to join them of course. In the acceptance route they propose officially and you can decide whether to settle down or not. Generally it's implied that you go to visit their parents & hometown in the Waterdeep area.

**Side note on the Waterdeep thing: If you don't romance them and they follow the acceptance route there's dialogue where they contemplate visiting Gale. When approaching an unromanced professor ending Gale as a Ren origin with the artificer shop ending he greets them and says he's heard their business is gaining popularity, then promises to stop by at some point. (this also happens in the form of party banter/idle dialogue if you're not playing as either of them and they meet the right ending criteria)

#bg3 #bg3 tav #my ocs #my tav #moss says things #reneeginald #gale

[azzys-personal-projects]

ATTENTION D&D PLAYERS AGED 16-18

I have a proposition for you. Are you wanting to play D&D but either have no one to play with or don't know how? I have some great new for you! I am an almost 17 year old writer/DM, but recently I've been experiencing some writers block. Where do you come in? Well I've had an idea, I would like to write a series based on a D&D campaign I've already created, I just need players! The idea is that I will record each session, and then write out a chapter based on the events of that session, here on tumblr! A quote book included separately and everything!

Here's the catch: I don't like being in/dming for groups larger than 4-5, I start having issues focusing on everything and it's no fun sitting there waiting for your turn in combat.

If you are interested in playing please message me so i can get you into discord and on the D&D Beyond campaign!

Also, if you're too lazy/don't want to create a character yourself, I have four characters premade for this campaign that you can claim under the cut:

ALL ARTWORK IS AI GENERATED ON THIS SITE!

Character 1:

Audhilde | Level 8 Rogue/Thief | Air Genasi

(Claimed by irl friend)*

(Afab gender fluid ) Background: From a young age their family lived in poverty, when their father disappeared travelling to another city, they started to take things of value to support their family, only for their brothers and mother to disappear as well. They had met the twins at a young age, and became fast friends, only to grow apart as they reached adulthood. They spent years searching for their friends, but struggled to even feed themselves some days, leaving them unable to travel in hopes of finding them.

Character 2:

Ajack | Level 7 Wizard/School of Evocation | Variant Human

(Unclaimed)

(AMAB He/Him)

Background:

Growing up fairly wealthy in the House of the Hearth with his twin brother, he grew to be a kind man, often being found in the poorer neighborhoods to play with the children. He always enjoyed the company of Audhilde, and has always seen them as a great friend. When his family moved cities he was put into the school of Evocation, but no matter what he does he always seems to fall short of his twin brother, Alack. If he'd been granted the time, he would have tried to find Audhilde, but his duties never granted it, leaving him to wonder what had happened to his good friend.

Character 3:

Alack | Level 8 Wizard/School of Evocation | Variant Human

(Unclaimed)

(AMAB He/Him)

Background:

Growing up spoiled, he never really cared for the company of the poorer children, except for Audhilde. Something about his brother wanting to be friends with her made him also want to be friends with them. He always had to find a way to be better than his brother, one upping him constantly to win over their parents favor. He only ever spoke to the children that Ajack did, even if he didn't care for his company, due to the fact he struggled to make friends of his own. When the two had moved so they could attend the school of Evocation he never bothered to search for his old friend, not seeing much of a point. Though he'd never admit it, it did hurt him to see his brother so upset about his lost friendship.

Character 4:

Taniew | Level 8 Cleric | Wood Elf

(Unclaimed)

(AFAB She/They)

Background:

Growing up in the temple of Eldath she was taught to always help others in need, however, she was not given many opportunities growing up to interact with anyone outside of the temple, growing up lonely and awkward. She eventually finds her way to the main city, still following the teachings of the Temple of Eldath, but also trying to find her own path and (hopefully) make some friends.

*Unlcaimed characters will become NPCs and when a character is claimed the player tag will be added in place of an unclaimed tag

Player limit: 1/5

#A Tale of Seven Cities #d&d #d&d 5e #d&d character #d&d oc #dungeons and dragons #azzy's works #creative works #fantasy #fantasy world #ttrpg #dnd #dnd character #dnd oc #dnd campaign #dnd5e