#and the gm was so fun and stuff!!! hes a really good gm

[pathfuckery]

Pathfinder 2e New Player Resource Masterpost

Hey there! Looking to get into PF2e? You’re making a great decision, but you may not know where to start! I’ve put together a handy list of resources you can consult while getting into the game. As always, if you ever have questions about PF2e, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I love this system, and I love helping new players!

Official Resources

The Archives of Nethys are the official host for the PFSRD. You can find ALL of the rules of the game for free there. Literally everything that is not Golarian specific is on the Archives, and all of it is laid out incredibly well. It may not look quite as flashy as beyond, but its search functions and layout are superior. 

If you buy one product from Paizo as you get started, I HAVE to recommend to BEGINNER BOX. This thing is fantastic. It simplifies the rules, gives you GORGEOUS character sheets that highlight all of your abilities, and have a fun little adventure that dovetails nicely into either their Troubles in Otari or Abomination Vaults modules. (As someone who has run both of those now, they’re both fantastic as well and I highly recommend them.) 

Beyond the Beginner Box, I would also suggest picking up a Core Rulebook. It is true that all of the rules information is already laid out in the Archives, but having a CRB on handd is nice for the art, plus the book is laid out incredibly well. If you can’t afford a CRB at this time, though, you’ll still be good! You might also watch for Humble Bundles, as they often have great Pathfinder packs on there, and sometimes it includes Physical CRBs, in addition to a load of other great PDFs. 

When looking to GM, I recommend the following pages in the CRB first. I’ve also linked the corresponding Archive pages: 

Introduction, Pages 7-31. This will give you the rundown on key terms, how characters are created, the base flow of the game, and the action system (the best part of pf2e!)

Playing the Game, Pages 443-481. This is the longest section of the rulebook to read, but there’s a lot of great stuff in here. This will give you the rules for checks, combat, conditions, resolving actions, and the differences between encounter, exploration, and downtime mode. The most important is encounter and exploration mode, so you can feel free to only skim the downtime mode section of this part. 

The Gamemastering section has a lot of great stuff, but for a GM, your two most important sections will be the following:

Encounter Building, pages 488 and 489. The rules for building encounters work in this system, and they work WELL. Obviously, environment, terrain, and how a specific groups strengths and weaknesses compare to a monster affect things, but if you budget a moderate encounter, it can be expected to be moderate. Just be sure you recognize that Moderate encounters are still meant to be challenging in this system, and Severe encounters are potentially deadly. Extreme encounters should be used incredibly sparingly. Maybe 1 or 2 times per campaign.

DC Charts and Adjusting DCs. Pages 503 and 504.  If you ever need a quick DC, these charts are your friend. You don’t need to memorize them, but you’ll want to have them in an easy-to-reference spot.

Youtubers

There are a lot of great youtubers for PF2e. I’ll only be highlighting a few of my favorites here!

How It’s Played  is probably the best resource for a new player, and helped me a ton with all of the rules when I started GMing. They do close looks at different subsystems, and clearly break down how the rules apply. You don’t need to watch all of their content before you jump in and play, but if you watch a few of their main series on PF2e between each session, you’ll be a rules master in no time! 

I also really enjoy The Rules Lawyer. He always has well-reasoned takes on things going on in the hobby, and and has an enjoyable calm/measured tone. I highly recommend his “Combat Tactics” videos, as he highlights some of the major differences with 5e and what things are now expected to survive. A lot of common 5e tactics are a way to a quick death in PF2e, but you do have the tools to survive!

The final Youtuber I’ll be highlighting is Nonat1s. He’s puts out quite a variety of videos, including skits and other fun things, but is also a wonderful ambassador for the game and gives great character advice as well. I want to highlight his “Welcome to Pathfinder Second Edition” video, which is just perfect!

Other Resources

I can’t create a list of resources without calling out Pathbuilder! It is hands down the best character builder, and its available on desktop and mobile. It’s mostly free, with a small donation being required to unlock premium features. At this time, there is no crossover between the web app and desktop besides being able to save and access characters from google drive.

The Pathfinder 2e Subreddit  is a wonderful community of people, and it’s a great place for discussion. There’s weekly question megathreads, discussions about releases, people highlighting great builds and fun things in the system, and it’s probably the quickest place to keep track of announcements. There’s also a lot of love for 3pp there!

Speaking of 3pps, I LOVE the Battlezoo line! One of my players is OBSESSED with dragons, and they have a whole book that was tailor-made for him, and it’s incredibly balanced and fun. They’ve also got a whole bunch of other cool stuff that’s been kickstarted and will be releasing soon. 

What VTT should you use if you’re playing online? My hat is thrown into the ring for Foundry VTT. It’s my VTT of choice. It’s wildly powerful with the Pathfinder 2e system, and a wonderful community of devs have gotten the system almost entirely automated so you can focus on RP! It’s a breeze as a GM as well, and the only difficulty is in self-hosting, but even that isn’t too bad. Their site has a great set of guides, starting HERE with the ways you can host. If you choose to self-host, you only need to make a 1-time payment of 50 dollars for the software, and only one person needs to actually do the hosting. Split between a group? That’s incredibly affordable, especially considering there is no subscription!

I’m gonna shout MYSELF out here. I put together a List of Actions you can take in combat that isn’t just moving or attacking. Coming from 5e, it can be easy to get stuck in the loop of move and attack, but there are so many more options, and those options are very crucial. This isn’t comprehensive, but covers the basics characters can have access to with only minor skill investment.

#pathfinder #pf2e #masterpost #ogl #orc #suck it wotc

[temporalhiccup]

Play Diary

Nahual: So a Priest and an Angel walk into the bar...

In an effort to display how awesome indie ttrpgs are, I thought I'd start sharing some cool sessions I experienced first hand and how I think the design of the game and the play culture was part of that!

This year, Thomas and I are sharing a weekend time slot. Nowadays I'm running Bite Marks and he's running Nahual! We take turns running a game to avoid GM burnout.

Nahual is a fascinating game. Player characters are always three things: they are Mexican, they are poor, and they are angeleros. They hunt angels, terrible parasitic and violent creatures from the invading conquerors long ago. But the Angeleros don't do it out of duty, killing angels and harvesting them is a means to survive. Our group creates tequila from angel blood.

Today was our first real session after making our characters a few weeks ago. Some truly fun stuff happened this session, and the more I think about it, the more I feel it was a really good mix of game design, GM facilitation, and player ingenuity.

The Expendido Move happens at the start of the first session or when time passes. It's a way to see how your business is faring. We didn't roll well: the option we landed on was that one of our regulars brings their troubles to your cantina at the worst possible time.

From the Cantina sheet we choose who our regulars are, and one of them is Zofiel, a double-agent angel, working for both Heaven and Hell, who can be in the right place at the right time.

So you can imagine that the kind of trouble a double-agent angel brings is legitimately awful. At the start of the game we're hit hard with how tough life is for an Angelero, and I loved it! It really sets the stakes for the premise.

A powerful angel, one not to be trifled with and way above our abilities, walked into the bar with a suspicious priest alongside him. They were looking for Zofiel, to take back something important.

Each player had a cool moment thanks to their playbook moves, but my favorite had to be what Josh did as Marco, the Tlacuache. As an Angelero with access to the scoundrel Opposum Nahual powers, we were in for quite a few surprises!

Marco transformed into his Nahual form and used one of his totem moves, Guise. He placed a mirage of Zofiel on himself, and rolled high enough that it was impossible to tell the difference between the two.

One thing lead to another, and a brief fight broke out. We collectively managed to force the angel to leave the bar, but not before he reached out to grab Zofiel - and thankfully he had grabbed Marco in Guise instead! Normally, being dragged into the sky by a deadly angel is a bad time. But Marco had one more trick up his sleeve! Thomas, our GM, couldn't believe it. "You want the angel to drop you? From high above? What?" That's when I said, "Josh, I think you should read the Play Possum move out loud so Thomas gets how cool it is."

"They can BURN your body? And you're UNHARMED? WHAT?"

I marveled at how many things had to go right for this move to be pulled off so perfectly. The guise's mirage needed to be perfect. The fight had to be violent but controlled enough that we would 1) survive it and 2) force the angel out but take fake Zofiel with him.

Play Possum by itself is already an incredible move. But getting to line it up perfectly so that a terrifying angel thinks one of your regulars is dead, so you get to protect them a little longer? Sheer perfection.

It was a great way to start our game. I've played Nahual as a one shot a few times during its crowd funding period, and I'm so glad I get to play the final version of the game as a campaign. I'm really looking forward to playing more soon!

#play diaries #meant to post this weeks ago whoops #indie ttrpg #nahual #pbta #violence #colonialism #catholicism

[secretgamergirl]

Do experience systems do more harm than good?

Earlier today I saw someone talking about the common wisdom that you can't make an RPG without SOME sort of system where after you finish a session (or maybe an adventure), the GM gives you some sort of points that, whether automatically or based on assigning them, makes your character better at doing stuff. Not only do I strongly disagree that that's something every game needs, I'd like to present the argument that even in games you'd have a hard time imagining without them, experience points might actually be doing more harm than good.

Before I even get into this, let's take apart the obvious perks to having experience systems:

1- It helps maintain longterm interest in keeping a campaign going when the players are getting some sort of regular reward.

This is true of certain campaigns, but I don't think I'd really ever want to be in one. In a good campaign, everyone involved should be having a fun time just hanging out with each other, putting themselves in the shoes of the characters, building up a story and a world together, and generating cool memorable scenes. That should be more than enough incentive to stick with a game, and if you don't have those things going on, you should really stop and work out what's going wrong, not try and pave over it by powering everyone's characters up. I don't need to boost some Watcher Score when I marathon through a good TV show or a movie, and I'm not even getting to influence how those unfold, you know?

This is also one of those many things where what we have today is sort of a twisted ghost of what was originally conceived back in the early days of D&D. I had an old project on this very blog where I was reading through the books for 1st edition AD&D with a critical eye, and a huge takeaway from that was that Gary Gygax seems like he was just the absolute worst kind of GM (also backed up by reading message board posts of his, and various accounts). Back in his day, leveling up wasn't the expected inevitable progression as a game went on necessarily. You'd roll your stats, with some harsh restrictions, be forced to play what you had, roll your HP too, and the game was just kind of inherently hostile to the PCs, so you had a good chance of dying in a given session. Not only that, but when you did, there was no real coming back from it, you make a new character, starting from scratch, with 0 experience, and see if you can keep this one alive long enough to get up there again.

And aside from the carrot of maybe getting one of those elite high level characters if you stuck with it, there was the stick of characters partying their gold away. Seriously, by AD&D 1e rules, characters would just kinda burn through... I want to say it was 100 GP per level per day. And not in-game day. Real life day. You'd better show up for every session, because a week from now, your character's going to have 700 less gold in their pocket whether you show up to play or not.

We don't really play that way anymore. At least nobody I know does. Leveling up is planned out in advance by GMs, characters level up at the same time as everyone else even when the player misses a session, and if you need to make a new character or you're just joining the game late, obviously you come in at the same level as everyone else. I don't even want to dignify the arguments against doing that with discussion. It's even common for people to start games at levels other than 1 because people just don't like low-level play.

And you know, this is way outside the scope of what I was sitting down to write, but I've gotten into the jobification of video games before, right? Where people keep doing stuff like daily login rewards and weekly challenges just so there's a sense of obligation to log into games every day? That crap doesn't actually make things more FUN, it's in there to keep players compelled to play regardless of how much fun they have, and that's... literally the argument behind experience as an incentive to keep a game running.

2- It good when number go up!

Funnily enough, this is the hardest one for me to refute. There is some basic direct release of the good brain chemicals when you have numbers, and they go up. And I mean... sure, but in a tabletop game you're not generally seeing a number climb on its own, you're getting points thrown at you that you have to jot down or mark off or otherwise track and do math with, and like... there's plenty of other results from playing the game good to release the good brain chemicals. You don't explicitly need this one.

3- It's cool when you can have a story where like some dorky little kid starts off barely able to do anything and all unconfident and then gradually gets it together and gets more confident and competent as time goes on!

Oh yeah, everyone loves that sort of thing, and there's a strong case to be made that this is the primary reason people feel the need to put an experience system in basically every RPG, but those systems are all kind of just the worst at actually delivering on that, is the thing.

D&D and its derivatives are the absolute worst with this. The way I put it in this earlier conversation, you start out all, "I am a poor peasant child, barely able to afford the clothes on my back, a length of rope, a week's worth of food, and this dagger here" and then a few months later "I am basically a god and any amount of money less than 1,000,000 times my starting net worth isn't even worth stooping over for." And when I made this point someone corrected me that if you really go by the expected pacing, a campaign without big stretches of downtime between adventures with the recommended combat pacing is going to get you to level 20 in a month.

Now, I don't want to completely spit on the D&D power curve here (the economic one though can absolutely go to hell, stop making me a billionaire as a side effect of killing monsters and do all that bookkeeping). I do enjoy the eb and flow, campaign to campaign, of playing the same characters as wimpy little nothings and demigods over however long it takes my regular group to finish a campaign. But as far as having characters with arcs to them? It is AWFUL!

First off, it's just too damn fast and abrupt. When our little ragtag band heads off into the swamp to deal with those goblins or whatever, we're going to come home from even that little speed bump of an adventure tougher than all our neighbors and absurdly wealthy, to a point where it feels almost inevitable that you leave your old life behind completely and look down on everyone you grew up with.

It's not IMPOSSIBLE to have some sort of long or medium-term personal quest to avenge my parents or show I'm better than some bully, but it takes a real delicate touch to do it right, since you really have to decide up front when exactly I'm going to have that confrontation, make the villain something of an appropriately challenging nature for the level I'm going to be when I settle things, and that I don't manage to arrange that confrontation much earlier or later than planned, because again I'm pretty quickly going from dealing with food rationing, animal attacks, and slippery ravines, to taking down monsters four times my size without breaking a sweat, to like changing the course of history and rivaling evil gods. There's a very small window where it makes sense for me to get back at that owlbear who put me in the hospital or whatever.

And that's not even getting into the problem of how I've got these other three humble little kids from home experiencing all this rapid growth at the same time. Can't really have a wise old mentor if we're using experience as experience. We're either never going to catch up, or we're going to leave them in the dust if they're not leveling with us.

Now, again, D&D is kind of a huge exception here. Most RPGs I've played instead go with a starting setup where you don't start off as some starry-eyed youth who can't do anything, but instead have some skill-based system where every character is an expert without peer in a handful of skills that fit some archetypical theme, and for anything else, they need outside help, either from fellow PCs, or making arrangements with NPC experts. Standard with this is a little drip-feed of extra skill points, but this... really doesn't work for what we're looking for here. If I want to be the party's hacker, I'm going to start off as an excellent hacker. I'm not going to put all my points into shmoozing people and then expect the rest of the party to put up with me looking for the any key over a dozen adventures before finally working out this make or break ability.

4- You gain new abilities as you level up!

So... first off this actually isn't generally all that true. If you're playing a wizard in D&D, sure, every couple levels you get access to a new tier of spells, and hey that's a big game changing deal maybe. Most level-ups though are just about numbers going up. All of them in most games. Hitting harder, more often, in bigger areas, maybe. Skills and abilities work more consistently. You maybe get more HP.

For now though let's focus on when you do level up and get cool new abilities. One moment you're some kid with a stick, then you bonk the magic number of goblins with it, and now suddenly you can make all your friends fly, unbound by gravity, or you can read the thoughts of everyone around you, or you can teleport home where it's nice and safe no matter what the situation. Well that actually really sucks for the GM!

Let's say I'm doing what everyone ever making an 8 or 16-bit RPG did and lifting plot concepts shamelessly from Laputa. We've got our big floating continent. Maybe we've got some kinda evil emperor up there, raining terror down on people or something. Nobody can get there and confront him... until they hit level 7 or whatever and have access to the fly spell. I better get any air superiority based adventures out before then. Also anything where there's a tower that has windows, or dangerous terrain, etc. Better get mysteries and hidden agendas taken care of before that mind reading. Better not think about trapping the party or them getting word of an attack somewhere else before that teleporting. And that's assuming I'm being on the ball about that sort of thing. I might have this whole thing planned, where the party desperately needs to get to that flying continent, and it's this whole quest hook where maybe they have to befriend a dragon or help build an airship or get some kinda rubber bones potion and access to a powerful cannon. Whole adventures about getting that power of flight, and any of these might just totally fizzle because oh whoops, the party leveled up and they just do that now.

Less dramatically, what if we're playing of those skill point games. I'm already a super great seductive femme fatale sneaking past laser sensors and stealing keys off people I'm charming right from the start of the game, and hey, cool, that's a nice simple archetype, everyone knows what I'm good at, we can plan missions around me being all sleazy over here while someone else sets up in a sniper position and someone else is in the basement hacking and all that. Several adventures down the road, well, I have all these skill points, I haven't been able to put them into the stuff I'm good at, so now I'm also a combat monster. The original combat monster can also hack. The original hacker can also charm the pants off everyone. We're starting to develop a lot of redundancy, but that's not necessarily bad? But then we play a bunch more adventures. Those secondary concepts capped off, we're working up more. Nobody is unparalleled at the thing they originally did. Have the party is equally amazing at a given thing. If we keep going like this, eventually everyone is going to loose all sense of unique identity, and there isn't really a strong in-game reason we need this whole ragtag crew anymore. Anyone of us can take on any problem solo, really.

5- The power fantasy of being super amazing.

This is kind of a point I've already hit but I'm stuck with this format, but the thing with experience is, again, sometimes sure you gain new abilities, but usually all your various numbers go up, and that actually kinda sucks in practice. First off, it's a lot of tedious bookkeeping, in basically any system you can name. It also doesn't generally really make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

I'm level 3. I've got a +7 to hit, doing 15 damage a hit, and an AC of 18. I'm fighting some orc with 40 HP, 15 AC, and attacking at +5. I level up a few times. Now I'm level 7. I've got a +13 to hit, doing 30 damage, and an AC of 24. I'm fighting crustaceanoids now, with 80 HP, 21 AC, and attacking at +11. Objective numbers wise, crustateanoids are way way tougher than orcs, but in my experience this is the EXACT same fight. I hit on an 11. I need 3 hits to take something down. It's bad news for me if my enemy rolls a 13 to hit me. All we've done is a bunch of annoying math refactoring with nothing to show for it but cosmetically reskinned mooks.

Now here, interestingly enough, I ONLY have the D&D type example here. Again, most other RPGs I have don't have that same sort of rampant power creep. You start out absurdly skillful at whatever your specialty is, and there's little if any room for growth, numbers wise. So here, if we go from orcs to crustateanoids to hellborn cyberdragons as enemies, not only is this technically a set of progressively scarier enemies to have to deal with, they actually ARE more meaningful threats to the party. Maybe those orcs were all show, they never really hurt us because we're awesome secret agents or something, but now things are getting serious because these crustaceanoids are just as good at sick flips and firing machine guns in two different directions as we are, so we have to take them much more seriously. And oh damn, after this we have to deal with a hellborn cyberdragon? Those are so scary if we all just rush in we're probably all gonna die. We need to come up with a whole complex plan to avoid directly engaging that if at all possible, and run for it if that doesn't pan out, or something.

And hey, we don't need something even more epic than a hellborn cyberdragon to top that. One of those is still going to be harrowing no matter how late in the campaign we bust it out. We can establish a power balance early on and keep it relevant like that. PCs gotta get more innovative and clever not just kill most monsters until demigods are easily punchable.

6: Revenge of 3- Well character growth is still important!

So, I really shouldn't be trashing experience points' ability to deliver cool character growth if I don't have some alternative to it, right? We need some way to change things up so the game doesn't stagnate. Well sure, but we can do better than experience there.

Just off the top of my head, how about we go with plot relevant respec-ing? Like at any given time a character's got their main spotlight thematic kit. Your best of the best at being a hacker or wizard or whatever. Maybe also a secondary skillset. And then definitely some number of slots for stuff they're into but it's not their main thing. Maybe we have a few variant minisets for those. Like if someone just unlocked their psychic powers and haven't fully figured them out, you have access to this here set of abilities. Once you have your big dramatic power mastery moment, that becomes their main thing and we demote their previous main thing to a secondary thing... and if we don't like this psychic stuff in the end, we demote it back down and fill a tertiary slot with like Lost Psychic Powers, where you still get to be all knowledgeable about how this sorta crap works and maybe have some battles of wills but your cool telekinesis is all locked away. At least for now.

I don't want to sit down and fully design a game at the tail end of a blog post here, but feel free to try this out with whatever system you like. Just pick whatever level feels like the good one, build characters with that as their basic kit, let'em have a few dips into secondary and tertiary angles, do a lot of getting thrown out of orders and taking major injuries and getting temporarily possessed or infused with mystery things. And you can do the plucky young kids in over their head thing with this sort of system easily enough. Start off with just the tertiary interest/mini-skill-packs, and once whatever you want to grow into starts coming up, rapidly grow into that over the course of a few adventures, no needing some big dramatic status quo change like this usually calls for.

Oh and I haven't been talking about video games here, but kill experience there too. If I'm not doing the whole Metroidvania/Zeld'em Up thing to pick up new powers as I explore, just gimme the whole kit from the get-go. Have traditional difficulty curves. We're good. Leave the skill trees and the level-grinding out of it. What are you holding back for, replayability? It's been raining free big-name big commitment games for years. Quit demanding that much of our time.

Oh and I keep forgetting to beg for money while I write these. I went 24 hours here without eating because I was just out of food and couldn't afford to go to the store. Someone took pity on me and hand delivered a big bowl of soup. Things are getting real bad. Patreon link.

#game design #experience points #leveling up

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

After my last FF being of a slow burn indie movie of excellent pedigree, I figure it's time to talk about something big and (joyfully) stupid to even things out. I joke, but Dungeons and Dragons have been on my mind these last few days, so why not talk about the movie adaptation. No, not that one, the good one. Trust me, I will get to the Jeremy Irons Chewing The Scenery movie eventually, but today we're talking about Honor Among Thieves.

One of the greatest joy of the current era is that with the mainstream-approximate popularity of Actual Play shows like Critical Role, Dimension 20 and Naddpod, there's a wider understanding of the kind of storytelling that goes on in tabletop roleplaying games. The particular way these stories blend character-focused storytelling with a main plot that usually functions as a lens for said character focus isn't unique to roleplaying necessarily, but it is a central component that this kind of storytelling needs.

As such, Honor isn't a quest for a magical artifact to slay an evil wizard undertaken by brave adventurers, it's more the ongoing catastrophes of a bunch of walking disasters that also happen to feature some looking for magical artifacts and slaying some evil wizards more as a matter of consequence.

To wit, our story follows bard Edgin, Barbarian Holga, Sorcerer Simon (I SEE what you did there), and outcast druid Doric as they attempt to reunite Edgin with his daughter Kira, now the ward of former friend of Edgin, Forge. Complicating matters is that Forge turns out to be a lying, thieving, betraying backstabber who has teamed up with an evil red wizard to rule the town of Neverwinter, and he's not much keen on relinquishing his ward, so it's-a-thieving our adventurers must go.

When I say the storytelling follow the beats of a D&D campaign, that isn't only on the character focus stuff, it's down to the structure of the thing. The band of adventurers plans to preform a heist, but needs a magical artifact to do so, so they enlist a legendary warrior whose hyper-competence and cryptic advice makes him the most obvious GM PC I've ever seen, for the uninitiated is a GM PC is a NPC made to follow the rules of a player character, usually for the GM to get some vicarious playing thrills and/or wrench the plot back on track directly. Together with this hot piece of HP, our heroes fumble some puzzles, circumvent some puzzles and gets into moderate to severe peril, as is tradition.

There's a real sense of fun to the proceedings, and the movie is filled with the kind of gags that might arise from a table full of giddy nerds. Of course the bird-man Jarnathan becomes the most important character in the room for like ten minutes, that's the kind of character players latch on to. Of course, our players have a close call with a pack of Intellect Devourers, who it turns out have no interest in the group. For one nobody plays a class who benefits from high Intelligence, they're also idiots, not that they let that stop them of course.

All of this comes together to create this infectiously enthusiastic film. The action scenes are made somewhat more kinetic than the miniature and/or imagination-based fair it's based on, yes, but there seems to be some attention paid to structuring most of them like D&D fights. The final confrontation with the aforementioned evil wizard in particular has the distinct flow of a climactic campaign-concluding encounter. There's stuff to nitpick, of course, but show me a single D&D group who plays strictly "Rules As Written," and I will tell you that you've shown me some miserable gits that'd be happier playing a video game.

There's obviously a lot of love behind Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, from the writing and directing choices above to using practical effects to show off some more fantastical humanoid races that they didn't really need to show off, although I would be derelict in my duties if I didn't remark that while Tieflings can indeed have human skin colors, it is highly unusual for a player to chose to be anything but blue, red or purple. I'm not saying Sophia Lillis should've been in body paint this entire time, but it could easily be justified.

#film friday #dungeons and dragons honor among thieves #dndhat #quick and dirty brain dump today folks #there's so much more I could talk about in this movie #the friendship between Edgin and Holga alone is worthy of an essay on its own #and I could probably go on about the little rule details for ages #like how Simon's magic show in the beginning is so shitty because he's using only cantrips #which are spells that are so low-cost and -effort that you can cast them the same turn that you cast a “real” spell #like the mage hand Simon is using to rob everybody blind #it's brilliant stuff

[papermonkeyism]

Me age 13: "omg, this is the best book ever I love it so much!"

Me age 20: "ugh, this is the worst book I've ever read, I hate it."

Me age 36: "this is a DnD campaign."

So I made it through the second book of the Icewind Dale trilogy, Streams of Silver, in my nostalgia trip.

And yeah. It's a game of DnD.

Specifically, it's a bunch of Tolkien fan boys having fun playing a fantasy fighting game and being awesome, and, yeah, it does its job.

It's still lacking in things I like in stories, but I can see where this is coming from. I prefer characters with more emotional depth and them having more natural feeling interactions, and deeper world building. But this is a game for people who like feeling awesome in a traditionally heroic way, and experience similar stuff as with their favourite books.

The characters are more archetype-ish/stereotypey, because they're written as player characters instead of complex people. There are A LOT of bad guys and evil creatures that the heroes have to fight, because DnD is a game built around a fighting mechanism, and campaigns are built with Random Encounters so the players can engage with the mechanics of the game they're playing. So this area has orcs in it, that will fight you. This bit here has human barbarian tribes that will fight you (and have some Unfortunate Implications about "noble savages" and their belief system being built aroud this monster creature from another plane of existence and other fun eighties tropes, but it's not like they get mentioned again after the encounter.) You failed a persuation roll to let this one town's guards let you pass because your elf hails from an evil elf race even if he himself is a good individual, and him having black skin marks him as dangerous to people (no wonder many modern depictions of drow have them more purple or gray than flat out black), so you are forced to take a detour through this swamp area that's full of trolls that will all attack you. And there's a giant snake that will attack you. And so forth.

And the Tolkien really shows! You could probably make a drinking game out of spotting all the Tolkien references, just the amount of times the word "mithril" gets thrown around could be one on its own.

So one of the main characters is a dwarf king of a lost underground dwarf kingdom, the Mithril Halls, who's ancient home got taken over by a shadow dragon which drove them to exile, and the Main Quest is to go find it and take it back (Hobbit). (None of his other clan mates from the Icewind Dale seem to remember or care enough to join their king in his search, but that's not the point, because you only got four players and they all picked different races. It's a game, your supposed to build it for them to play, that's the whole point.) Once they get to the place, there's a kinda "Mines of Moria" feeling scene of them wondering how to open the door, though the solution to it is more DnD feeling than that of Lord of the Rings. Though, speaking of Moria, remember how awesome the Gandalf vs Balrog scene was? Good news! We liked it too, so much so that we did the whole "beloved hero falls to a 'certain death' in the depths of the mine while fighting a bad guy/evil being" thing TWICE! Oh, and did your players like Galadriel? You have a nice GM who gives you a magical queen NPC (who's name even rhymes with her), who comes to the heroes' aid by giving advice and helpful items, except even better, because what if she also had a crush on your favourite character?

Sprinkle in a group of evil rivals, with a nemesis for the favourite character ("narrative foil" kinda feels like an understatement, though, as Entreri gets introduced as a dark mirror for Drizzt with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer), couple evil wizards, a fun and quirky family of good wizards for a fun interlude for your players, and few other fun and magical encounters, some cool loot, and a classic damsel in distress (though I do give credit for Catti-Brie actually having a role in this book. I hated the way she got kidnapped and damselled when I read the book last time, but on a re-read now, I do see her being clever and using her situation to sabotage her kidnappers, even if teenage me was very disappionted in how she didn't pick up a sword and do the awesome battle stuff herself).

(Okay, so this is just me theorizing, and I don't really have any factual basis for this, but I kinda get the feeling like Wulfgar was originally planned as the "young hero protagonist" of these books, but Drizzt ended up a lot more interesting of a character, and the stories just gravitated to focus on him instead as the author's fave. Not that a similar thing would have ever happened to me or anything, haha...)

Like. This book still isn't my thing, really. I very much prefer deeper and more rounded character writing and more thought out worldbuilding, but I must admit, realizing that this book was basically a game of Dungeons and Dragons kinda made the whole experience so much more enjoyable. Even if I spent the entire time reading thinking about the players of the characters instead of the characters themselves as people, but still.

You made the story out of reshuffled Tolkien tropes but edgier, put in some whimsy nonsense that makes no logical sense, and had tons and tons of really flat enemies that kept spawning and aggroing your party like video game mooks. Aww, sounds like a fun campaign, your players must have had great time!

... I should probably re-read Lord of the Rings one of these days.

#shut up paper #I think I need a tag for these

[littleladymab]

FebruarOC - Xochitl

OOOHHHHHH SUSHI MY BELOVED!!!!!! She is my character for our Werewolf game (which we're playing TOMORROW) it had been on hold for four solid years due to pandemic (we play (mostly) in person) and life/job stuff, but we finally got to start playing again on NYE! Nothing like sounding in the new year trying to remember a game you haven't played in four years ;;;; 

(It was fine I killed something in one hit) 

Xochitl is the 5'3" alpha of her pack and team dad (her beta, Rory, huge 6'something, is team mom). One of the first notes I made for her was that her fighting style is: (ง •̀_•́)ง !!! and a little bit of (*｀ω´)/――――― ●)´Дﾟ) I was nervous about picking up the role of alpha originally, but I made the choice after figuring that no one else would probably do it (and I was right lol) in the end, I'm really glad! I've had a lot of fun, and she's the right amount of impulsive (it is one of her flaws) to carry them forward, and I'm the right amount of "I can't stand awkward silences at the table" to keep conversations going. Whoops. 

She's from the Fiana tribe, though she's got a Hispanic name because of her father (Who was a Shadow Lord of Spaniard descent who left his tribe when he fell in love with Jael lmao), and she gets along most with her father who is also an Ahroun (meaning they're real good at fighting). Her mom had another child in a first... not marriage? I don't think they got married, but she had another child before she married Arturo and had Xochitl, but Xochitl never knew her sibling that well as they disappeared and presumed dead when she was still very young. 

And by presumed I mean they actually did die, but they're back now! Hah hah! And working for the Autumn King, which, you know, isn't a real thing, so totally normal and okay and nothing wrong here, amiright???? 

Well, We're going to find out tomorrow, because we're totally going to finally kill the autumn king and save Zeke's mom and ????? something Xochitl's sibling. 

the nickname Sushi comes from when the pack went to a bar and we met a group of Fae for the first time -- we were all being super paranoid about the Fae and you KNOW you're not supposed to give them your real name, except that Grace (the GM) said one of them was FC as Janelle Monae and I made some sort of involuntary sound and Grace asked "was that you or Xochitl?" and I went "(makes ionno sound)". But in her all her awkward grace, Xochitl introduces herself as 'Sushi'.

And then Ashanti (Janelle Monae) just won't stop rolling 10's when interacting with Xochitl and becomes instantly SMITTEN which now means that Xochitl is dating a really powerful fae lord of the winter court! And she's promised to bring back the head of the false king for her girlfriend! I'm so normal about them. 

AND! ONCE THEY GET BACK FROM AUTUMN! There's something in the sewers that has been encroaching upon Rat territory, and well it's not like Xochitl and Remy are a thing, but also, Xochitl has two hands and I wouldn't be mad if she and Remy flirt a little hehe BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, She's been keeping in touch with Remy (who is also team tattoo) about the goings on, and at the moment the ratkin have it under control, but Xochitl is gonna help investigate and deal with it later. 

Now, generally, the pack is an investigation agency called City's Eyes! through a few different series of events during their investigations, everyone did get a gold lightning-scar tattoo on their body (hence the Team Tattoo) -- this marked them all as chosen by these lost totems, and so one of our big quests was to go and save all these lost totems! Xochitl switched from Clashing Boom Boom to Quetzalcoatl as a result, which is like, her learning some responsibility and really taking ownership of being a leader and not just going about it as pell-mell as she had been. 

She has been one of my favorite characters to play, and even with our 4 year gap, the one that I've played the longest (we've been playing since like 2018). It's so easy to slip back into her! And even tho she no longer has her chaos twin that was Theane, she now has another Ahroun in Tali who is also more Mature(TM) than Theane was and I think that'll help keep Xochitl on the right track! Especially because right now she's distressed because her estranged "I thought you were dead but now you're working for someone who is legitimately insane and you're going mad but occasionally you remember who I am to you and try to warn me" sibling is there and she REALLY wants this king's head to give to Ashanti. She only just met Tali but insofar feels like she can rely on her! And of course, she can always rely on Rory and Theo to help protect the others. 

Now, forgive me, I have a lot of playlists and a lot of pinboards for her, so I'll end with all of those! I've also uploaded her character sheet and her profile for free to patreon (which includes her gifts and weapons). Please know that when I roll to hit, I'm rolling a minimum of 9 dice, and then if I hit, WOAH BUDDY. What a satisfying sound!! 

Pinboards: 

Xochitl's Board 

Xochitl and Ashanti's Board 

"We went to a fancy party and all I got was second place in a tournament and also this fancy pinboard of outfit inspo"

Playlists: 

Xochitl's character playlist 

Xochitl's "Workout" playlist 

Rowan's playlist (Xochitl's sibling) 

City's Eyes playlist 

Xochitl and Ashanti playlist (ver1)

Xochitl and Ashanti playlist (bodyguard AU edition)

I told you: normal. 

Wish us luck storming the castle and killing the false king of autumn!!! 

#februaroc #a lil miss original #lil miss writings

[amaribelt]

in commemorace of me almost busting my ass on the slick ass dominos floor I'm assigning the twst boys jobs at dominos and my reasoning why, we have had like 10 gms at one time so not that unrealistic lmao

riddle- riddle is a heavy stickler for the rules so as much as I could see him being a corporate inspector that would ruin the fun of this so for the sake of this post rank 3 general manager and future franchisee. he trains new employees the "right" way even though it's not as efficient (like cutting sandwiches with the pizza roller cutter thing instead of the giant guillotine blade we use for the actual pizzas) he's the reason the store would get a perfect score on inspection

trey- treys pretty responsible and his parents run a bakery so I can def see him as a rank 1 or 2 gm they honestly don't really have any special roles other than just being helpful in my experience, definitely works make line or oven most of the time. he used the cutter blade on sandwiches all the way efficiently maximize profits, and I KNOW this fictional twst dominos store would be busy af.

Cater- Rank 2 gm but specializes up front, this man can talk to people great customer service skills and is pretty enough to get good tips and sell extra food just because he's cute.

ace- I don't trust this man at all making my pizza but that's the thing most people get trained on first unless they have something that makes them appealing or more fit for something else, ace is cute but I don't think he's fit for register. he probably works on making and loading sides as those aren't that hard to mess up half the time your throwing 8-32 peices of chicken onto a little trey or putting in like cookie brownies or like twists in.

deuce- my man is trying his best to make his way up to main makeline he probably makes the simple pizzas like a simple Hawaiian because I think he would struggle a bit with specialitys he probably knows what goes on like a meatzza or deluxe but struggles with like Honolulu Hawaiian.

leona- he could be promoted if he wanted too but he doesn't care that much, definitely a driver. is their stuff they are actually suppost to do? yes, do any of the drivers at our store do it? no never not in a million years. I'm like 75% percent sure their suppost to clean out our hot bags according to the schedule but I've never seen anyone at our store do it half of them are just on their phones or chilling in their cars. in Leona case it's napping he's not aloud to sleep in his car anymore because he has gone back to sleep and ended up not delivering a pizza.

ruggie- he's either a GM in training or driver GM they both get payed more than the rest off us and ruggie is pretty competent so I think it fits, drivers get payed the most out of standard positions and I think driver managers get payed a little more than that, drivers also get really good tips too.

jack- he's on main makeline, jack has good grades and studies so it's fair to say he memorize all of the abbreviations and what goes on each side. you yell out "large extravaganza and philly sandwiche" and he's got it. he probably doesn't make the prettiest pizzas but he's got a good memory to make up for it and double checks whatever ADeuce duo makes for the days they are on main makeline.

azul- he owns a restaurant so as much as I could be cheap and say he's the actual owner who never comes into the store and just collects the money I'm not, GM level 4 he's the "boss" and the most likely to get his own store in a few years time. he never closes ever I could maybe see him opening but I really just see him coming in a few times a week for like 3 or 4 hours and sending out the schedules. I know he's a hard worker but I can't see this man making pizzas at all he's either up front taking orders and ringing people up with cater or working oven with trey. their not "easy" jobs but don't require you getting your hands too dirty especially if your the boss and can get someone else to do the dirty work.

jade- GM level 2 again not many "responsibility" level 2 gms tend to just be their for questions and occasionally helping or training new employees, might work up front from time to time but I can see him slapping dough sometimes. does what he's told without complaining.

floyd- this man doesn't have the patience for anything else this man is a driver on a pretty good driver on a bad day you better give him all contactless for the safety of the customers, sorry Floyd fans but I have to be real with yall.

kalim- I love kalim as much as the next person who lives off of sunshine characters but this man only has the skills to work up front at register, I don't think he'd complain if you asked him to hop on makeline or like sweep or do dishes but he's not happy. he likes to give people their orders and make the kids smile.

jamil- Jamil is more than capable and can easily get stuff done and doesn't complain what you tell him to do, tell him to clean the absolutely disgusting hot bags? he's on it, need him to clean out the catch treys? those are going to be sparkling and you don't even have to worry about them almost being dropped. he will rack cheese and clean the deep freeze no hesitation. he's a great GM but he has definitely fumbled a few times, he has sent most of the drivers home exreamly early right before a huge thunderstorm hit and incase you didn't know people order more deliveries when the weather is cold rainy and overall icky. he didn't tell anyone that he send home over half of the drivers so their were Many frantic phone calls from the rest of the GMs to get all the drivers back. (that is based off of a true story we had to call our boss and atleast 15 more drivers because he only had 3 clocked in and our delivery times were over a hour and a half)

vil- when training people on makeline we have the fact that we must make the prettiest pizzas known to man, pizza making is a form of art and you better be the next da Vinci or atleasr give your best effort. GM level 2, fast and efficient and has good customer service skills so he works up front when understaffed. if vil works up front for a whole day their is definitely a jump in carry out sales. although he would rather not do the gross and disgusting tasks he will if theirs gloves he is not washing pans and grabbing them out of the disgusting and greasy pan bucket empty handed no matter how much you pay him. heavily inspired by my 4th favorite manager and myself no matter how much you pay me I am NEVER grabbing and cleaning pans empty handed yall don't know how gross that is.

rook- definitely works main makeline with vil and even though he's not as strict on making the best pizzas known to man he can be particular he will make sure pizzas aren't burnt and under his watch their won't be any illegally big bubbles on pizzas or too dry cheesey breads. whenever he's upfront he memorized peoples orders to their faces he doesn't even have to ask if it's a carside he definitely memorized peoples license plates

epel- he is not aloud to work up front no matter how understaffed we are he's always on makeline he has no customer service skills, if he and vils schedules overlap then maybe he could answer a phone or hand people a pizza. they have sent him to get something off of the top shelf in the walk in and almost brought the whole self down on multiple occasions (based off of many of my true stories where the latter was no where to be found I almost died that day) he's pretty strong and helps with some of the more physically demanding tasks like refiling the sanitation buckets (those get unbelievably heavy for no reason okay and I'm pretty strong) or refilling the fridge he can definitely carry more than one of the packages of 20 onces and the stacks of 2 leaters get pretty heavy too.

idia- If he wasn't so anti social he would have good potential of working up front when you have to type in your social security login a million times a day or type in someone's credit card info it helps to be able to type fast but my man could not even ask someones name on their order to hand it to them, good in theory terrible execution. he would probably be a driver or stick to cleaning like doing the dishes, most of the time you don't have to talk to anyone if your a driver then you have to get them to sign the receipt and I think he would implode. dishes Is the best job you don't need to talk to anyone and most people do it alone unless your like some of my managers who like too do it together and gossip. perfect for putting on music or a podcast and zoning out too.

ortho- even though he's a child when he grows up I see him working up front, he's pretty social so I don't see him struggling that much

malleus- people think he's scary and tend to avoid him so even though he's pretty sweet I feel like customers and some coworkers would go out of their way to not talk to him, would probably be a okay delivery driver he wouldn't even have to stair people down to get a good tip his threating aura would mean people would do it so they could run back inside with their pizza asap

lilia- he's honestly pretty flexible but I feel like he would be a terrible driver I feel like he would be the definition of r/maliciouscomplalence or a huge troll and no inbetween. if someone said bring pepper flakes for a better tip without saying a exact amount he would bring the whole box of pepper flakes. no one needs a 100 packets of pepper flakes but they didn't say an amount so rip. he's probably only aloud to do it when they are really desperate for drivers.

silver- probably just a general insider and will do whatevers needed pretty flexible and chill, probably not aloud to work oven just incase he falls asleep we can't have a pizza falling out of the oven.

sebek- he Is also not aloud to work up front due to the fact he has no volume control we can't have him scarring away customers can we??? if not a general insider than maybe a driver I honestly don't have much of a opinion of him or what he's good at sorry sebek enjoyers but I honestly have no idea what he would be good at.

#amari writes stuff or something #twisted wonderland #twst wonderland #disney twst #riddle rosehearts #trey clover #cater diamond #ace trappola #deuce spade #leona kingscholar #ruggie bucchi #jack howl #azul ashengrotto #jade leech #floyd leech #kalim al asim #jamil viper #vil schoenheit #rook hunt #epel felmier #idia shroud #ortho shroud #malleus draconia #lilia vanrouge #silver twst #sebek zigvolt #silver vanrouge

[victoriadallonhater]

Regent's power in Weaverdice

This is for my oomfie. Everyone else, fuck off.

(it's a joke)

Alec is a fun character with quite a bit of depth, but his power is quite a fucking headache. Like what do you mean you just become better at messing with people over time. How do you mechanize that? I mean, I know how, but that can be hard to think about if you are new to the system. Weaverdice is really not made for powers that get better over time or that offer finer functions, so let's pretend it does here!

Regent's power with interruption

I think if someone asked me to play Regent, I would raise an eyebrow. I would only let it happen if you're a fucked up traumaqueer (flattering) working through stuff, and not like I don't know a guy who wants to do weird shit to people. I mean, it's fine in certain context. but I don't work there. So if you are a traumaqueer, this one is for you.

Alec's power is to control people through their nervous system, and he has some sort of information relay back to him. He gets better with it over time, meaning he can only do small things with other people until it's him taking over their entire body. That progression isn't entirely clear, so I have to make it up! And that's unironically great because I can do some fun shit. Also, he has body sensing powers, and I don't remember the range because I am not a Alec Scholar. So, let's go.

1. The cape has the ability to control the bodily functions of people who are physically nearby and conscious. These bodily functions range from twitching legs to causing vomiting. Each can be blocked from their victim as a DC 4 Guts. For each successful mastering, the cape gains a token on the target. When collecting ten tokens through one or several encounter, Regent is capable of using their body.

Nearby is just 'is in the same physical scene as the player'. Like are you in the same room? Yes. Are you in the same street? Yes. Are you on the phone? No. Then, the victim can also resist the mastering through a roll, which is good to have written down. Also gaining ten tokens is rather easy, sometimes, but then again, it may not be if you think about it. You have teammates who will knock them out their victims.

Interlude 1: What is a DC? It means difficult class, and it means what the roll needs to be. If it's DC 4, it means you need to get a four or higher. If it's 3 or below, you fail. 4 is the average in Weaverdice because it's a D6 system. Depending on your stats, you may roll with a +1 or -1, and very rarely with a +2, and even rarer with a -2. Let's say you have 4 Guts, you roll with a +1 to Guts roll, and if you had 2, you roll with -1.

Additionally, I added a token mechanic to explain the 'I can make them do whatever I want' portion of the power later.

2. Regent can do the following Action on any targets that are within their sight and are physically present. They can only use their power with people with human biology, or close enough up to GM Fiat, and they must be conscious and alive. - Leg Twitch: They are Knocked Down, and cannot get up until next turn. If affected twice, they can only get up by suffering from the Leg Pain status. - Hand Cramp: They drop their weapon, and cannot pick it back up with it for 3-Guts amount of turns. If affected twice, they cannot pick it up until 5-Guts amount of turns. - Vomit Throes: They start to vomit, occupying one of their Actions. If affected with it twice in the same turn, they are only able to take a Move Action.

The first thing is like 'you cannot master a dog :(' or 'this breaker is too weird for you, sorry!' And then rest of it is pretty straightforward: this is what you can do. I wanted to reward his ability to do things by focusing on people, so that's pretty fun too. Like if he focuses on a target, he's way better at hurting them than if he spreads his attention. This would like tie back to his trigger if I had it on hand, but that's just trigger headcanon here. Knocked Down reduces movement to 5', for the record. i think so, at least. I don't have the 3.0 doc open! Sue me! I am not writing more actions because I could go on, but I am limited it to three things. Then again, if I were running this other than in my head, I would tell my player 'yo, if you want to do something that's not written like making someone slit their own throat, just ask. I'll say yes if it makes sense, and I'll say 'no but' and give you a way to do it.'

Interlude 2: 3.0? It's the version of the game I'm basing my rules on. It's the latest rules made by Wildbow. It is accessible through the Weaverdice reddit where I get my stuff. A lot of the resources are fanmade because Wildbow does not give a shit about weaverdice anymore, so you know. Make that what you will.

3. At ten tokens on a victim, Regent can opt to control their victim as a Full Round Action and immediately start puppeting the victim. The victim now starts rolling a Long DC 20 Guts for each turn. When the victim completes the DC, they are freed from being controlled. If the victim isn't being controlled for one turn, they will not take any actions. If the victim has a power, Regent can use their power as long as it is external and doesn't change their biology.

The Long DC 20 Guts is to spice things up: I don't want my player to have permanent control over their gamer. The fact Regent must take one action also limits how many thralls. Again, this is largely for the DM's comfort, and the player's ability to keep tracks of their actions. Technically, this version of Alec can control two people at once. Additionally, for powers, it means that the power is like throwing a fireball or superstrength - and not being able to count up to fifty digit of Pi, and that it doesn't make them unmasterable through being a changer or a breaker.

Interlude 3: Long DC what? Some DCs are higher than 6 and are impossible to reach in one turn. So GMs may be inclined to make them Long DCs, where the characters keeps rolling as a Full Round Action until the action is completed. This could be hacking a computer that is encrypted by Dragon or dismembering a body with a hacksaw or in this case, freeing yourself from being mastered by Regent. You can also use this on small DC like a DC 4 to throw out a fireball for a low level cape. Essentially, it means the DC will not fail as long the cape keeps rolling for it. You can also add a time limit to make it like 'you have three turns to reach DC 20, and if you don't, you will not escape the burning building!'

Finally, let's talk about his Manton effect and his body sensing. It'll be quick. It's like a passive.

4. Regent has the ability to sense bodies within the scene. Regent does not need to see them to sense them. As long as Regent can sense them, he can affect them. Additionally, when he is getting mastered by a power affecting emotions, Regent roll a 1d2. On a 2, he avoids being Mastered.

This is really simple. If you want to give a range on his body sensing and body hijacking power, I would make it 50' to 100'. Up to you! I didn't write one because I was like 'let's keep this power theater of the mind.'

Regent's power without interruption

Regent has the ability to control the bodily functions of people who are physically nearby and conscious. These bodily functions range from twitching legs to causing vomiting. Each can be blocked from their victim as a DC 4 Guts. For each successful mastering, the cape gains a token on the target. When collecting ten tokens through one or several encounter, Regent is capable of using their body.

Regent can do the following Action on any targets that are within their sight and are physically present. They can only use their power with people with human biology, or close enough up to GM Fiat, and they must be conscious and alive.

- Leg Twitch: They are Knocked Down, and cannot get up until next turn. If affected twice, they can only get up by suffering from the Leg Pain status.

- Hand Cramp: They drop their weapon, and cannot pick it back up with it for 3-Guts amount of turns. If affected twice, they cannot pick it up until 5-Guts amount of turns.

- Vomit Throes: They start to vomit, occupying one of their Actions. If affected with it twice in the same turn, they are only able to take a Move Action.

At ten tokens on a victim, Regent can opt to control their victim as a Full Round Action and immediately start puppeting the victim. The victim now starts rolling a Long DC 20 Guts for each turn. When the victim completes the DC, they are freed from being controlled. If the victim isn't being controlled for one turn, they will not take any actions. If the victim has a power, Regent can use their power as long as it is external and doesn't change their biology.

Regent has the ability to sense bodies within the scene. Regent does not need to see them to sense them. As long as Regent can sense them, he can affect them. Additionally, when he is getting mastered by a power affecting emotions, Regent roll a 1d2. On a 2, he avoids being Mastered.

Post-power commentary

This is a power I would like using, not gonna lie. I think if I were in a game, and I got this power, I would go 'yeah this is fun, I like making people vomit!'. And my cape name would be Vomitgore. I'm a princess like that.

Anyways, if you want to use this, feel free. Change it to what you need, and just credit me vaguely, unless you like change everything then it's fine. Honestly, I just do this for fun.

Aisha next xoxo.

#alec vasil #regent #weaverdice

[lizardinkart]

Lizard Reads Ward

Arc 2: Flare

Lizard Cry Counter: 2

TL;DR: Cool shit happening this arc with more fun worldbuilding around the state of Capes, Victoria’s coping mechanisms and hero complex, and some especially funky stuff exploring other Earths and how the shards/triggers are getting extra-special fucky after Gold Morning. We finally get to meet the rest of the PHO group and they are all wonderful, and Wildbow is flexing with the extended metaphor of powers as trauma. 8.75/10

Alrighty, let’s get wormin’! 

Once again, splitting this into mini-arcs so I can keep track of it: 1. Job-Hunting, 2. Broken Trigger Shenanigans, and 3. Group Therapy(?).

Part 1: Job-Hunting

Oh, if this did not capture the soul-crushing nature of the job search so well lol. I really enjoy Victoria’s engagement with each of the big groups that have cropped up since GM, their ideologies, and the optics that each group focuses on. Because if Victoria Dallon understands anything, it’s Aesthetic (in both physical and ideological appearance, thank you Carol (derogatory)). I think the bit where the recruiter asks if Panacea can also be part of the package deal crushed my soul so hard cause mmmmmm. We all have that family member that is perceived very differently from how they actually act towards the people they ostensibly care about. Adding this to the list of times I wanted to hold Victoria gently in my hands. 

Crystal continues to be a treat, I appreciate that she doesn’t own scissors. I find it so interesting that she wanted to be part of the Parahuman Paramilitary, but I guess stability has its allure in times of absolute chaos. Also gonna slide in here the bit about the people Victoria talked to about joining the totally-not-a-cult that comes back later in the arc, I appreciate the “if I can save even one person it will have been worth it” mentality. 

The hospital scene was really nice, both with Tempera/Fume Hood and then taking the kids flying. I think a lot of people can be very cynical about how doing stuff for others can be very self-serving (esp someone as famously cynical as WB /affectionate), but I think that this came across very genuinely, and it’s actually something that can be very good for trauma recovery by just doing things to get yourself out of your own head. Especially when it came to the kid with the friend who had triggered, Victoria really didn’t have to go out her way to make sure that the kid was taken care of. I think that this once again shows her character. Taylor could never (shoutout to the kids that triggered in her territory). 

Part 2: Broken Trigger Shenanigans

Oh man oh man oh man. I really did come into this part with a sigh because really, up until now Wildbow had not wowed me with the new stuff he was exploring with powers/shards, but this section grabbed me by the throat and threw me across the room into a brick wall. I appreciate that this is carving out Ward’s new identity as its own story with more to say outside of just Victoria, but also work as reflections of her and her unique experiences with her power/shard. It’s neat!

But aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa man this was downright tragic to read. Once again, WB hits with the suspense of “something is happening on a timeline, and all you can do it be there for when shit hits the fan.” The Parahuman Paramilitary was funky and off-putting as any type of military institution tends to be. Because ACAB, that’s why. 

Corona Pollentia warfare was enacted here, and the fact that people were literally stopped in space was horrifying and distressing as all hell, Worm never really got to touch on when triggers went wrong because shit was already bad enough being, well, triggers. But the bit at the end with the last guy standing not wanting to be subsumed into a collective (shard/entity?) consciousness was haunting as hell and so, so cool. I can’t wait to see how the entities continue to fuck around and Victoria and the Gang continue to find out. 

Part 3: Group Therapy(?)

Subsisting off of a comfort diet of brownie ice cream and shit TV, Victoria hangs out and Dr. Yamada pulls back the curtain on doctor-patient relationships. Therapists are people too! But it was nice that she thought of giving Victoria something therapy-related to do, even if it was ultimately a ploy to get Victoria to join her little group therapy team and (unsuccessfully) talk them out of doing the whole hero team thing. 

But mmm, I do love me these guys now that we get to really meet them, so down the line we go again!

Kenzie: Still the love of my life, I would kill and die for her. She is so damn earnest and I can respect the hell out of that. Include her in things!!! Give her friends!!! Be nice to her!!! Let her make all the boxes!!!!!! Also I will be deeply upset when we figure out her whole backstory. Preparing to be devastated. 

Sveta: I love that she and Weld are dating and that she is so happy but knowing Wildbow he’s gonna fuck it up somehow and it pisses me off so bad. But for now I will revel in her joy!!! Let her be happy goddammit!!! Also shoutout to her absolutely owning the disability label, I really was like “ah man this is gonna be implied subtext huh” but nope! And I’m really happy about that! But on god the fact that she has a body now??? And she gets to make it pretty and expressive how she wants it???? Kissing her on her forehead she is too good, great even. Unironically the best character. 

Tristan/Byron: Knowing that I have to go back through the PHO chapter and check the timestamps to see which one was in control is simultaneously infuriating and exciting lol. I can’t remember if case 70s appeared in Worm cause if they did I do not remember them. But yet again adding to the weird shit shards do is a thing I will applaud because the specific scenario of “twins who were touching when they triggered” is just horrifying in concept and seems that way in practice as well. I’m placing my bets for the human trafficking being so that they can try to separate themselves. Or something like that IDK. I also wanna slap Tristan on his dumb jock head because sometimes he needs to shut up (tho I feel him. I, too, talk incessantly, see this post series lol). But he gets a pass because he’s nice and makes arms <3

Chris: Breaking out my trusty spray bottle to spritz him every time he’s an antisocial prick. Not necessarily an actual character flaw, I am interested to see what’s gonna happen with this exceptionally small lad, but mmm. He’s an interesting fellow who I think would benefit from touching some grass every now and again. But progress looks different for everyone I guess!

Ashley: She also gets the spray bottle but for being an edgelord. Shadow the Hedgehog called and said tone it down. Once again, very much the Bitch-type of “I have a singular trajectory and will do what I want fuck you all” but in like, a friendship way? Idk, I know everyone loves her (and ships her with Victoria- *cough*) and I also love her, but I would also like to punch her sometimes and I think that is ok! She’s getting better! Maybe! I hope!

Rain: I can smell the little-meow-meow coming off of this guy. This man is a protagonist of another story but got shoved into Ward instead. He is scientifically crafted to be pocket-sized, and if he’s not dead or beat to shit by the end of this story I will eat a shoe. I can tell a sopping wet whipping boy when I see one lol. But in all seriousness, I know that everyone has a lot of shit going on, but Rain’s “it’s complicated” catchphrase is like “Yes, Wildbow, I know he’s your special little guy. It’s ok, you don’t have to be coy about it.” Kinda the way that Amy was in Worm tbh, Wildbow just has favorites he likes to torture sometimes and I have to respect the honesty lol. But yeah, he is genuinely interesting and has some nifty stuff going on w/ his cluster. Very intrigued that Snag is his clustermate, and how their power-exchange works. Again- cool shit!  But oh my god someone’s gonna step on him. Too small lol. 

But all that being said, I appreciated the actual group therapy going on here, and that Victoria is getting some buddies to talk stuff through with, even though this really does seem like a setup for failure. The talk about logistics triggered the “gotta schedule D&D” part of my brain and whoo boy that was some anxiety lol. But I am intrigued to see where this lil team goes and what they do in the story moving forward! Also, a very strong end to the Arc with “This is the way things are now” “...Fuck that.” Stuck that landing, let’s get some change rolling!

(Also the interlude was funky, love seeing Weld and Crystalclear again. The theocracy seems like it mayyyy be an issue tho moving forward. Maybe lol)

Final Thoughts

I think that this arc had a lot to offer, and really started to solidify the direction that Ward is gonna try to go in. I can already feel the length of the story though, that 2 arcs have felt like 6, but ya know. It’s the format! But there’s a part of my brain that really wants to go in and cull a lot of stuff that I know people love but is just like...this is so long. But other than that- I think that finally getting around to the new group is good, and I think the biggest takeaway from this arc is the diversity of Shard Shenanigans. Looking forward to that making shit go sideways lol. 

But yeah! That’s all I got, not as insightful perhaps as the last couple entries but I hope y’all like the more first-impressions type rambling. As always, would love to hear what y’all think of this arc!

Until next time- Ward out ✨

#lizard’s ward thoughts #on god doing 2 of these in a day has me dead on the floor #it feels like i procrastinated my homework lol #ward web serial #ward #ward spoilers #wildbow #victoria dallon #kenzie martin #ashley stillons #rain o'fire frazier #sveta #tristan vera #byron vera #chris elman

[hannahhasafact]

Things the fucking slap about the non Intrepid Heroes Dimension 20 seasons in order of release:

Escape from the Bloodkeep

Absolutely stellar party with Amy Vorpahl, Erika Ishii, Ify Nwadiwe, Matthew Mercer, Mike Trapp and Rekha Shankar

Includes the one familiar the Brennan refuses to harm, and it’s the most horrible creature you’ve ever met.

Speaking of J’er’em’ih, I don’t think Trapp gets as much appreciation for Sokhbarr as I think he deserves because when Trapp commits he fucking COMMITS. And that one very specific investigation check? Ooh baby it was so good

Speaking of boss ass moves, Rekha’s balloon ass fuckery was such a good move. And Ify being like “can we be bros with the eagles?” ending up being one of the best moves to do? Absolutely fantastic

Honestly one of the funniest seasons of D20 tbh imo. Like I do not like LOTR, so I didn’t think I’d like this season. But it’s such a hilarious season, no wonder it’s one of the side quests I feel like folks recommend the most

Tiny Heist

The McElroy fam? Even if you don’t listen to TAZ (like me) you know they’re a good time

The Rick Diggins speech is just so fucking bananas it’s so good. Rick Diggins is also just the most batshit character

Personally, I love heist stuff. It’s so fun! And I really found the heist itself to be so fun! (Griffin’s part it in is my favorite, Bean is adorable and I love him)

Also there’s always something so fun about the mechanics of tiny universes within our universe? The way they explain toys and stuff coming to life is really interesting and fun imo

Lily Du’s first time at the table and Jess Ross at the table! Speaking of I love how Jess completed her arch, she knew what was going down with her character and made a complete story. It was great!

Pirates of Leviathan

Personally I love this season, and our first time having Aabria at the table ahhhhhh (also my first encounter of “please have the camera focus on Aabria, she makes the absolute best expressions”) Plus, it’s back in the Fantasy High Universe which is always fun to explore more about the universes (and get some NPC cameos/appearances!)

Also tbh I love all of the PCs in this series? Like they’re all so interesting and unique, and are such full characters.

Literally the absolute best PC introduction that exists in d20, Bob I love you so goddamn much

There’s a goddamn Queer Eye joke in this season and at first it’s played for laughs but honestly becomes like… the softest thing? And it warms your soul? And it also features Matt Mercer as a tall ass rat man (this season also has a rare pair I ship and I think no one else does lol but I love it so)

Pirate T-Rex. Just feel like that alone needs its own bullet point lol

Mice and Murder

The mystery!!! Is so fun!!! It’s cool at the end of the season to see how everything was connected, and it’s fun to go on the journey with the party

Katie Marovitch rolling the first nat 20 of the season and not understanding the implications of a natural 20 for a good couple of minutes will always be funny

This season is pretty much all classic College Humor cast mates, so if you’ve been watching College Humor stuff for over a decade like me you’re sure to find some joy in it

Sam Reich has some of the most killer one liners in this season and he’s just such a fun character. Honestly, this season is just so goofy and everyone is just trying to make each other laugh. It’s delightful

The texting element!!! Is so dang interesting!!! And it works so well for the mystery

Misfits and Magic

The first season with a new GM!!!! Aabria!!! When that trailer came out we were all SHOOK, truly began a new era of d20 and we love it

And first time PC Brennan??? Listen he’s such a fun PC we love the strange lil guys he plays

Sam Black deserves so much more love, she’s such a fun PC. Like Danielle would just say one liners that would knock me the fuck out, she’s so dang funny

Listen one of the funniest moments to me will always be Lou and Brennan as their actual selves being like “Mukbang? That’s not a real thing right? No… no it’s not”

The fact that one of the animal companions is straight up just a basketball is hilarious and ridiculous

The Seven

If you love the Fantasy High universe and want to know more about some of the side NPCS, ooh baby they’re PCs now and they’re all played by hilarious cool folks (including our first time having Izzy Roland, Persephone Valentine and Becca Scott in the dome!)

This season absolutely feels like a sleepover with friends. Everyone is giggly and having so much fun, and it’s so fun to watch (and also emotional when you least expect it lol)

I’m having a hard time describing funny moments because it’s just one of those things where you have to experience it to get it? Like this season had me cry laughing but I will never be able to describe the sexy duck outfit as hilariously as Becca does it’s just so good

Oooh before we got killer costume descriptions from ACOFAF you better believe we got it during this season. And if you’re a big costume nerd like me you’ll just be like heart eyes mother fucker

On an interesting note, Brennan is kind of playing both an NPC and PC? Technically he’s still just playing an NPC but Zelda is like… part of the party (obviously part of The Seven). And it’s a fun change!

Shriek Week

Gabe Hicks is a delight as the GM! I am constantly thinking about the line “You may be yolked but this man is a straight up omelette” because it slaps and tbh I would love to see him in the dome again

I think this is canonically the only season where characters FUCK

Another season with a very fun cast, like all of the cast has big horny energy and it’s so silly! If you’ve watched this season you understand Lily’s energy in Dirty Laundry a lot more lollll

Also this season canonically has Mothman and The Count from Sesame Street as characters and it makes me giggle every time

Tbh I really wish this season had more time but if you’re looking for a super short series, it’s only four episodes long!

Coffin Run

Jasmine Bhullar is SO fun as the GM and I feel like really plays off the PC energy well? She was so much fun

This season is another one that is just goofy fun! And you know I love me some goofy fun (the whole eating letters thing is so stupid and so fun)

Personally think the sets for this series are SO cool like oh my god?? The trainnnnnnn ahhh

This is kind of a bigger spoiler but I will never be over the wine glass props for that one combat? When she pulls them out I DIE

This cast REALLY goes in on their characters and plays them so big, it’s delightful

A Court of Fey & Flowers

Do I really need to get into why this season fucking slaps? I’m pretty sure it’s one of the most popular side campaigns because it fucking SLAPS

Aabria is back as GM, bringing poetry and grace to the dome and ahhhh (like she literally recites poetry but also the episode introductions are just straight up poetic

This is the season of romance and brought me to the horrible realization that I like DND actual plays because mostly I like the role playing apparently lolllll

Outfits outfits outfits outfits ahhhhh we love some fantastic outfitsssss

The whole Green Hunter bit is so fucking funny

Anyways moral of the story is D20 side campaigns are fun and you should watch/listen to them

#dimension 20 #listen I literally made this just because of the Matt Mercer announcement #like folks will mention Escape from the Bloodkeep having Mercer but not PoL #and Pirates of Leviathan was our first intro to Aabria if you hadn’t seen her in other dnd stuff! #anyways the side campaigns are fun and I just wanted to talk about it #ramblings #these are all just my opinions! you don’t have to agree! #long post

[grimvestige]

B) What inspired you to create them? (Tiarnan) ; C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story? (Draper) ; What memory do they revisit the most often? (Wrath!Caedrinn) :3

Triple threat!!! :O

What inspired you to create them? (Tiarnan)

Tiarnan is actually an AU of an NPC I really love RPing from my own D&D setting, The Folly of Helios! (That NPC is just called 'The Owl'!) I ended up playing Tiarnan after talking over a few character ideas with the GM for Hadreon and deciding he would fit the best.

As far as how I changed him for the setting I basically went "What if his wife wasn't dead lol" (and also changed wife to spouse bc we need more big strong nonbinary sword wielders), and from there it was lots of putting puzzle pieces together with things I liked about Hadreon! He's an enchantment wizard because it's a great specialist school mechanically and I wanted to engage with the ethical conundrum of enchantment magic + diplomacy. He ended up a rebel sidhe because I liked Leon a bunch and just wanted my character to be friends with him, and his aspect ended up getting picked based around the choice of specialty magic school & profession!

Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story? (Draper)

A lot actually! I really love Draper now, but I very much was frustrated with her at one point because the party didn't end up relying on her for the two things she was good at: healing & poisoning stuff. Plus, anything else she was okay at, there was already somebody who specialized in it.

BUT by the end of the campaign, she ended up basically brute forcing her way in lmao - she got a level in magus so she could actually hit things herself, not to mention that it was her adoptive family that played key roles in helping the party.

She's the sort of character who's a completely unwilling adventurer but is unfortunately good at it and gets roped into things because of that, which is fun to play!

What memory do they revisit the most often? (Wrath!Caedrinn)

OOOO I GET TO TALK ABOUT MY KNIGHT COMMANDER! It's fun to talk about his internal feelings since there aren't a lot of methods to explore that in-game!

The memory that Caedrinn revisits most is confronting his own reflection in the mirror and the Aeons. He feels really conflicted about having these powers thrust upon him - on one hand, they give him the ability to undo horrific curses and rituals with the snap of his fingers. On the other, they urge him to force people to repent for understandable crimes like stealing supplies because they weren't getting enough.

Being calloused and lawful isn't in his nature, but the path set out before him demands it - both in terms of mythic power and in leading the fifth crusade. After some recent happenings involving companion quests (To not spoil things and to keep it brief, Regill's first quest, and a part of Sosiel's that involves interrogating a Hellknight), he's having a bit of an existential crisis. Is he the carefree drunken wanderer turned hero? Or is he becoming the heartless authority he despises?

(Bonus art of Caedrinn's reflection I wasn't sure I was gonna post but since it's relevant here ya go!)

Thank you for the asks!!! these were very fun to think about!!

If you want to throw more OC asks at me here ya go!

#not art #oc asks #ask game #daisy rambles #ocs: tiarnan #ocs: draper #ocs: wrath!caedrinn #wrath of the righteous #pathfinder wrath of the righteous #pathfinder wotr #wotr commander #wrath of the righteous spoilers #wrath of the righteous aeon #pwotr

[kaesaaurelia]

Made little Hero Forge guys out of every single character I've ever played at least one session of in a TTRPG. (The ones with closeups I've played for more than one session.) Details under the cut.

Top Row:

Literally Just Terezi Pyrope, Pathfinder; half-orc Investigator Made for a Pathfinder oneshot wherein my friend was playing a Vriska-inspired character. I feel the need to disclaim that we did not kill or maim anyone out-of-game. I don't even remember if we killed anyone in-game because I remember it being pretty puzzle/trap-focused?

????; Ryuutama; Crafter/Autumn Sorceress I'm kicking myself that I don't remember her name. She was a seamstress, and in the specific world we were playing in we were the descendants of space colonists, so I decided her ancestors would be from a culture with really pretty fabric patterns.

Ylva Truehand, D&D 5E; half-orc monk. A herbo if ever there was one. Accidentally became the figurehead of a coup d'etat at home and had to Leave Right Now Immediately. We only got to the part where we all met at an inn before outside circumstances meant the campaign fell apart.

2nd Row:

Katja, 3.5E D&D; human cleric prestige class (maybe a Radiant Servant of Pelor?) My very first TTRPG character! I played her in a high school friend's historical-fantasy-inspired homebrew setting campaign he ran one summer in college. She was meant to be an army doctor for Fantasy Imperial Russia and we were doing an escort mission across a desert that was, iirc, disputed territory between three superpowers? Mostly I remember killing a lot of ninjas and then stumbling across a magical oasis where the water was magically pacifying, finding the mineral that was responsible for this effect, grinding a bunch of it into powder, and then making our GM's life a living hell by slipping it into NPCs' drinks whenever we wanted something from them.

3rd Row:

Safira, Stewpot; Paladin/Artisan. This one's pretty obviously an expy of my angel OC Vehuel. Stewpot is a game about retiring from adventuring so the character concept for her was "Holy warrior chosen by prophecy to kill a great evil with a magic sword; accidentally fell in love with the great evil. Eventually killed it anyway. Deeply traumatized."

Yarrow Tunneler, Mausritter; Acorn sign wireworker. Yarrow came out so cute here! A lot of stuff in Mausritter is randomly assigned and I think her class was one of those things, but I liked the wireworker thing (basically she's a mouse electrician) and one of her starting bits of equipment was a spool of wire. There weren't any good wire spools on Hero Forge, but I managed to make a battery-looking thing for her to carry around on her back.

Esca Glowfin, Ocean Tides; mermaid. Yeah so the game wanted me to choose whether she was going to be a mermaid or pirate but I wanted to be both so I made it work. The actual character concept I had in my head does not look much like this but turns out one of Hero Forge's weaknesses is deep sea benthic horrors with needle teeth. So I just made her hot. Sorry, Esca, you probably deserved better.

4rd Row:

Minu Darzi, Shadowrun 5E/Definitely Not Shadowrun At All; elf face. This one's an expy of my demon OC Nisroc, but like, a very very tiny sliver of Nisroc's whole schtick. I tend to describe her as "what if Grendel's mother was a shitty grifter who wanted to be an influencer?" but she shoots a lot of people so I feel like her sphere of influence is powerful but limited to like. Influencing people to die.

5th Row:

Royse, 5E D&D; Aasimar rogue. Another Vehuel expy, this one much younger and less traumatized. Royse was made for a West Marches group I didn't really vibe with. The one session I played was great but the out-of-game downtime stuff felt like a part-time accounting job and I don't have any interest in accounting. Anyway Royse was fun and she was gonna be a Swashbuckler.

Pandora (& Scylax), Worlds Without Number; mage (Necromancer/Beastmaster). For the oneshot group I'm part of we've started doing a test combat session at the end of Session Zero to make sure our characters aren't going to die immediately, and after that our GM decided we should be using the Heroic rules. In the combat trial, Pandora used her one (1) spell slot to mind-control one of the wolves that were attacking us and it killed a bunch of the rest of them, so given the opportunity to add another 1/2 mage specialization I picked Beastmaster and gave her a wolf. I really liked some of the lore for this game but oof, it's super unforgiving. (I think it might be a good starting point if you wanted to play a Locked Tomb campaign, though?)

Zamira the Magnificent, Blades in the Dark; slide. This character was a disgraced stage magician who accidentally killed her assistant (maybe sawed them in half?) and I liked the concept but our Blades in the Dark party really didn't end up doing much RP, even though we are a very RP-heavy group; I kind of wish the game had facilitated it more.

6th Row:

????; Tempus Diducit; Weird Scientist. Tempus Diducit is a no-prep chaotic game about a time travel crisis where a lot of things are randomized; mostly I remember there being superintelligent octopi and making strong acids, and also me having a lot of very annoying ideas involving my specialized knowledge of both cephalopods and chemistry.

????; Subway Runners. I remember very little about my Subway Runners character but basically this is a no-prep game where your character sheet is entirely randomized and every character is probably at least a little Done With This Shit because every Subway Runners PC is a gig economy worker whose shitty gig job is fixing an urban fantasy public transit system full of extremely weird shit. I think by the end of the session all our characters had cat ears.

Miriam; You Awaken in a Strange Place; marine biologist. Once more my specialized cephalopod knowledge comes back to bite me in the ass! (Also, this is the second Miriam on the list; 'Zamira the Magnificent' was a stage name.) YAiaSP is another no-prep chaotic game; you also get to make up all the skills your characters have, and Miriam was good at Identifying Marine Animals but bad at Working Under Pressure, which was great because they were in a locked submarine murder mystery and identifying marine animals was basically of no use whatsoever. I think in the end she failed a Using Scientific Equipment roll and then bluffed that she had actually gotten the DNA results to get the murderer to confess. This is unethical if you're in law enforcement; if you're a professional marine animal identifier it's still unethical but I think it's also kind of impressive. Only I forget if it actually worked, so maybe it wasn't.

7th Row:

Heshky, Pathfinder 2E; half-orc investigator. I have literally only ever played half-orc investigators in Pathfinder, which is very funny to me. [Edit: This is no longer true! I have a dwarf ranger now.] Heshky here is not much like the Terezi expy, though. He is an expy, but of one of my OCs rather than someone else's and his backstory is that he's a former mob accountant whose boss died in circumstances that were technically not his fault, so he had to leave town for a while. I would absolutely love to play him somewhere else; he was made for my one-shot group but we ended up stretching that Pathfinder one-shot out to like 5? 6? sessions and I got very attached. (If I played him again I miiight not start him out as an investigator though, because he almost died like 3 times.)

8th Row:

Zirane, I'm Sorry, Did You Say Street Magic, baker. ISDYSSM is a cooperative worldbuilding game so I kind of forgot there was a character I played in it, but apparently I did! This guy lives in a fantasy city and works at a cafe owned by some mystery person (possibly a vampire?) but he's not worried about that. He is good at baking, but likes experimenting with weird combinations of flavors, which sometimes means his extremely well-made baked goods taste regrettable.

Kjersti, Session Zero; war-witch deserter. Session Zero is a character creation/development game without character classes; it can actually be played solo as a writing exercise too! So I just kind of went wild here. I really like the concept I ended up with and keep meaning to post what I wrote up for her; over the course of the game she went from annoyed arcane college student to spoiled rich girl to army deserter trying to survive a magical war crimes-induced apocalypse and daydreaming about overthrowing her own government in no time at all.

Edie, Genesys; dwarf mad alchemist. The setting we decided on for the Genesys one-shot was cyberpunk fantasy, a bit like Shadowrun but if magic had always been in the world, so I decided to pull out one of my old, old LJRP characters (Ed Espis) and repurpose her. Edie grew up a third- or fourth-generation corporate citizen and very privileged, but when her parents died under mysterious circumstances and she was fired shortly thereafter, the company decided she had to pay off all the resources they had invested in her entire family so now she's broke and has to do crimes (petty) instead of crimes (war) to live. She ended this session by shooting a guy in the head but listen, he extremely deserved it.

#kaesa op #kaesa ocs #long post

[mllelaurel]

Shard... like 90% of the way through the book. 

Can’t deny, Salvatore writes incredibly entertaining fight scenes. There’s a fun and creativity to them. 

-

That said. Yep. This sure was the pre-5th edition era where D&D ethos was all about ‘some sentient species are evil/basically animals anyway. Go ahead and kill ‘em.’ (I have no idea if 5th was, in fact, where fans/players started noping hard at that trope, but given that 5th is where D&D went mainstream, it feels like a good guess.) The fight with the orcs was both really fun choreography and... uncomfortable. We get a bit of that with the wererats too, but the wererats at least get a smattering of pathos. 

-

But back to the good stuff! Chapter 19th. Basically everything about Chapter 19! 

Jarlaxle: “Look, for it is I, Drizzt Do’Urden.” GM: “Make a deception roll.” Jarlaxle: “...Nine.” Entreri: “Fuck it, I roll intimidation.” Jarlaxle: “Can I just steal their shit and drink their booze?” 

Entreri: “Meh, swashbuckling. What is this swishy bisexual shit?” Jarlaxle: [Rolls a crit.] Entreri: “....Well color me bisexual. Swishy can stay.” Jarlaxle: “Close your mouth, it’s time to bail.” [Grabs his hand and dashes, like he’s the Doctor and Entreri is his brand new companion.]

-

Sharlotta’s narrative continued, alas, to not impress me to its bitter end.

-

On the other hand, while I initially found Danica bland, then she and Entreri met and started interacting. And I kind of love that “I hate everything about you, and not even in a sexy way, but also I respect you as the Other Smart Person In This Room” dynamic they immediately fall into. 

-

I did, in fact like the Perspectives on Religion. And find it notable that Entreri, at least in this book, specifically verbally attacks priests and their corruption and abuse of power, rather than gods or faith. Like, I can’t imagine he thinks highly of the other two topics either. But he aims his anger with scalpel precision rather than broadly, in this case. I also kind of love that for all his own distrust of organized religion, Jarlaxle still notes that the cathedral is beautiful. Because it likely really is, and he loves beautiful things. 

-

God, Entreri’s down-to-the dirt reasons for hating the Crystal Shard being essentially that it enslaves and corrupts people and fuck this, he belongs to no one. It’s both such a great character moment and hurts so fucking bad, given what happens to him later. 

-

Allllmost done with this one. So of course, Promise of the Witch King e-book has been checked out by someone else. So I’ll tackle Starlight Enclave next. It’s on Hoopla, which means anyone with access can check it out at any time. 

#legend of drizzt

[calextheneko]

Season of the Villains: The Forgotten One

Ok, going to admit it's pretty depressing that the idea I came up with to talk about villains all month and the series only has two posts. Will have to try again next year. Just, health has been a real struggle to do anything and most of the time I lay around just wishing the pain would stop.

But enough about real life things that suck. Time to get to fictional things that suck in a fun way!

So a bit of background before I introduce this villain. I'm a Forever GM when it comes to things like DnD and Pathfinder. Anyway after having run a lengthy Pathfinder campaign we were in the mood for something different. And not DnD of any edition cause it would be the same thing. Basically, we wanted to run a campaign in a setting that wasn't swords and sorcery. I wanted to run Mouse Guard, which I should have just used my GM override to say that's what they're playing. The rest of the party wanted to play Star Wars d20. So... Anyway, I bargained with them, and agreed to GM Star Wars under three conditions.

I got four sessions of Mouse Guard before we began Star Wars and they had to give it an honest chance. Lo and behold, even the guy who considered himself to manly to play Mouse Guard (lol at the fact that he's any kind of manly) admitted he enjoyed the game a lot and it was really good. So yay, if the game group had continued might have gotten a full campaign down the line but there were some problems with the group I can go over another time, mainly centering around two players who really hated each other that led to me just yeeting this group out the window eventually.

2. I would GM Star Wars, but I refused to set it in the modern era. If I was going to do Star Wars, I wanted to do the Old Republic. I found the setting infinitely more interesting than the modern era stuff and I really love that even the Sith Empire has a bit of nuance to it.

3. We're doing a primarily Sith campaign, because I wanted to do a campaign that involved Sith politics and power plays and not just 'You are destined to go defeat the bad guy.' I did say that after a certain point in the campaign they'd be given the freedom to leave the empire if they want and go see out the Republic to become jedi instead if that was what they wanted or become bounty hunters or anything, but the campaign was starting with all the force users as acolytes in the Sith Empire and the non-force users as mercs who had work in the Empire or were there for some other reason.

Anyway, that campaign is a heck of a story, but we're not here to recount the entire thing today, but instead talk about a villain meant to be a one off character who wound up taking the role of Main Villain for the entire campaign after a party member made some... Less than smart choices.

Introducing the Forgotten One

"I am the Forgotten One. My knowledge of the force and technology made me too dangerous to my people to be allowed to live but too valuable to kill. Instead, I was stripped of my name and identity and trapped in this prison for an eternity."

I sadly don't have any art for this guy.

BUT ANYWAY! When the party made a trip to Illum as part of their questline to build their lightsbabers. Or in the bounty hunter's case to get a crystal to power up his sniper rifle. They discover an old factory for mining crystals that has a strange structure built from force crystals, that turns out to be a powerful weapon that could be set to self-destruct and take out the planet. A bit of arguing here... See... The Star Wars party only had three people.

The Sith: Goal, become a Sith Lord, get a Dark Assembly set, master sith politics.

The Jedi: Despite being a sith campaign one person insisted no rolling a jedi. I allowed it under the condition he be flexible with his character since this was a sith campaign. After their original master is killed in the first section I also had them gain a new master through a holocron, someone who believed in balance in the force in life, and was willing to train them only under the condition they work together. His idea was that the light vs dark battles were tearing the article apart, and if he could train a jedi and a stih who could work as a team it would mean there was hope for peace for the galaxy if he could prove the two weren't incompatible. The Jedi will be the one ruining this guy's dreams and making all the bad decisions.

The Bounty Hunter: Non force user, wound up involved in the plot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and having a kill order put out on them with the rest of the party's original mentor when he was killed off at the start of the game by a sith lord named Darth Umbra trying to make a power play for the Dark Council by eliminating "traitors" and "heretics" within the empire. Naturally said traitors and heretics were always found among the people who opposed her ascension.

Sith tried to set the thing to blow the planet up because knew about another research time that was researching force crystals and to see if there was a way to make force based technology that non force users could use. Jedi got super upset about this and wanted to undo it but I pointed out he didn't know in character the sith had sabotaged the Force Crystal Engine. Meanwhile unknown to them both the Bounty Hunter had witnessed the sabotage and already warned the researchers about it so they could fix it. Ah, such a healthy party dynamic this is.

But that's beside the point, on Illis, they found a Rakata Mind Prison. Now anyone familiar with the Rakata know that they're bad news, and Mind Prisons are bad. Anything inside a mind prison is SUPER BAD NEWS. Especially when the thing inside is a Rakata Force Ghost.

And so enter the Forgotten One. No one in the party is smart enough to pass their knowledge check to recognize what they're looking at so the Jedi touches it and his mind is ripped out of his body and transported inside where he meets the Forgotten One, who immediately assaults the Jedi's mental self so that he can try to steal his body. This ultimately fails because... And get this... The sith, despite how much he hated the jedi out of character realized something was wrong when the jedi completely stopped moving after touching the mind prison, and went inside the mind prison on purpose to back him up. Together they were able to stop the Forgotten One from taking over the jedi's body.

So... The Forgotten One changes his tone, talks about how he was robbed of his identity by the other rakata who feared him for his knowledge. Leaves out A LOT of information about the actual why and how he was imprisoned. It wouldn't fit the narrative of trying to make himself out as a victim. And claims that he's basically gone insane after being stuck in this void for years and that he knew it was wrong but tried to take the jedi's body because he was driven to desperation to get out of this void and see the world again.

And he makes an offer to both the sith and the jedi.

"I know secrets of the force that are all but forgotten to both the jedi and the sith." This should have been a red flag that he was already able to probe the jedi's mind for enough information to find out some things about the jedi and sith and current world that he should have had no way of knowing and show that he wasn't trustworthy as was literally already chowing down on the jedi's memories for information from the battle they had before the sith rescued him.

Anyway... The rakata offers a deal.

"Take me with you. Let me ride as a passenger in the back of your mind just so that I might see the galaxy again through your eyes. I just don't want to be stuck here. In exchange I'll grant you access to all the secrets of the force I know. I can make you more powerful that you dreamed possible."

NOW! Here's the fun part. This whole force ghost Rakata thing was intended as a trap for the sith. Tempt him with the dark power he wants to become a mighty sith lord and get him possessed.

But here's the thing about the Rakata. They went so hard dark side they basically made the sith look like cuddly puppies. Want to know why Tatooine is a desert and the Sand People hate outsiders and technology? Because the Sand People were slaves to the Rakata, tried to fight back with tech, and rather than come down to the planet in person and put the rebellion down, the Rakata decided to glass the entire planet turning it all into a desert and just leave. The Sand People now live in fear of the outsiders bringing in outside technology and bringing back the wrath of the Rakata who this time will not stop at just leaving the place a desert.

It's wroth noting, that all Rakata who were still alive and active and not ghosts or inside mind prisons also got severed from the force. It's unclear why at least from the old republic games. I'm sure there's a novel spin off that explains it. But it seems to be that they went so hard dark side they broke the balance of the force to the point the force just severed their entire species as a result to stop them from using those dark powers.

So... Rakata are bad news. Rakata in Mind Prisons are even worst news.

So anyway, the party fails their knowledge checks. Seriously, none of you invested points in Int? And don't recognize what a Rakata is and the level of threat they're facing. But the sith listens to this and recognizes this as a clear Faustian bargain. And is like, yeah I'm not letting a ghost into my body that's just asking trouble for down the line. And so he refuses and since the Forgotten One has already been defeated inside the Mind Prison and can't take their bodies by force now I'm like and that's the end of that character.

And then the jedi asks a stupid question.

"Will these powers make me stronger than the sith?"

Me Mentally Out of Character: Wait is he really considering this?

The Forgotten One In Character "Of course, you'd be the strongest force user alive."

Jedi "But is this going to be dark side stuff, I don't want to use the dark side."

The Forgotten One "Light and dark are such naive ways of looking at the Force. The Force is the Force. Light and dark are illusions you come up with. It is a tool and what matters is how you use the tool."

RED FLAG WARNING! Surely there's no way after the Forgotten One dodges the question about dark side powers that the jedi would

Jedi "I accept."

Me Mentally: *gears grinding to a halt as I realize I now have to rework the entire campaign storyline to deal with the jedi being possessed by an evil Rakata force ghost because he wants to be stronger than the sith character due to their out of character rivalry.

So... The Forgotten One enters the Jedi's mind and rides in the back of his head, and they all leave the Mind Prison. The Forgotten One is now free from his prison. The Sith checks out what the jedi looks like under Force Vision and discovers two auras... And the second one a super heavy dark side aura that something about it is wrong that it makes even the dark side heavy sith uncomfortable to examine it.

SO YAY! Mistakes have been made!

Now that we got to how the Forgotten One got released... Let's talk about his goals and abilities.

The Forgotten One was imprisoned instead of destroyed because his knowledge was considered too important too destroy and thus they couldn't just kill him. But there was also a secondary reason. They didn't want this guy returning to the force either. Also, it turns out that he tried to take over the Infinite Empire (The Rakata Empire that ruled the entire galaxy, same one that glassed Tatooine) through the use of forbidden force techniques and slaying all rivals. Through a great battle with many other Rakata and they finally managed to trap him in a mind prison and left it on Ilum where they thought no one would ever find it and hoped that the need ever arose to consult him about his knowledge because he was considered that dangerous.

Why is he dangerous? Well... KOTOR2 fans are going to appreciate this one. He ate people. Not their literal bodies. But like the Exile and Darth Nihilus he possessed the ability to consume people through the force, absorbing their power and making himself more powerful. This was how he became such a large scale threat by consuming more and more Rakata in the past.

And of course, he still has that power now. He's patient. He's waited thousands of years in his prison so he's patient enough to wait for the right time to tempt the jedi further. Waits for the jedi to be in a dire situation where the risk of character death exist. The player is kind of a wimp and freaks out anytime their character is actually challenged in combat, complaining about the CR being too high forgetting that combat is supposed to challenge them not be a cakewalk. I adjusted the CR to fit the strength of the party rather than their level. Anyway... When the jedi feels threatened and fears for his life in a battle against an apprentice of Darth Umbra (who you may remember as the original big bad at the start of the campaign) the ghost offers to save the jedi. Asks to be unleashed just for a few minutes so he can win the battle.

RED FLAG

The jedi agrees. The Force Ghost takes complete control of the jedi's body, makes a single gesture and the sith apprentice just falls to the ground and stops moving. Then the Forgotten One surrenders the body back to the Jedi, knowing now is not the time to make the power play to take control for real. And instead pretend he's keeping his part of the deal.

As for the body of the now defeated sith. It's still very much alive. It's breathing. Pulse is normal but slow as if they were asleep. They basically come off as asleep or comatose. Until the party sith checks out what the enemy sith looks like under force vision. And he learns two things. The enemy sith is just gone as far as the force is concerned. There's no aura at all. The body is alive, but the force that should run through all things is just gone. And the sith is naturally disturbed by the fact someone could basically just do the Star Wars equivalent of eating someone's soul, and do it so effortlessly. Then he checks force vision on the jedi and the Rakata again, and find that the Rakata aura has grown bigger. The Rakata didn't give the power he consumed to the jedi. He kept it for himself.

This would become a running theme, anytime the Forgotten One was allowed to let lose. His methods were cruel and the fates he gave arguably worse than death. When interrogating someone for information, he forcefully entered their mind and forced them to relive their worst most traumatic memories, with injuries from the day that traumatized then reappearing on their body as they rexperienced the memories till they broke and told him everything he wanted to know. And of course, he ate a lot more people, growing stronger and stronger... Until the Forgotten One's Aura looked like a massive dark aura surrounding the jedi with what appeared to resemble marinette strings as part of his aura running from his aura to the jedi's aura. It's pretty clear at this point he believes and treats the jedi as his puppet. Also every time the jedi unleashes the Forgotten One he gets a dark side point. You'd think this would be enough to make him realize the guy isn't his friend. BUT NOOOOOPE! And since the Forgotten One is inside of him he can't clearly examine its aura and see what is happening, and the Forgotten One has at this point began secretly influencing his mind with me making secret rolls for things so that the jedi would be blind to the darkness growing inside of him.

And here's the thing about how the Rakata worked manually. It could attempt to take over the jedi's body, manipulate his mind or force him to do something. If it did so the jedi got a will save. But the more people the Forgotten One consumed the higher the DC became to resist him. And... Each dark side point the jedi gained gave him a stacking -2 penalty to his will save. The Forgotten One is playing the long game, and allowing the jedi to think he's in control. When the Forgotten One tries to come out in a battle under the justification of 'self-defense' and the jedi doesn't want him to he makes a will save to suppress the rakata. He thinks he made his save because wisdom is his best stat and will his best save. In reality, the Rakata is pretending to lose to his willpower to give the jedi the illusion he's in control. By this point the Rakata has become so powerful because the jedi refuses to stop letting him off the leash, and as a result the jedi has been tainted by so many dark side points it's virtually impossible to make the save with anything other than a nat 20. All he had to do was STOP LETTING IT EAT PEOPLE and he wouldn't have had those dark side points or had the DC shoot so high up.

So we've talked a bit about the Forgotten One, and how he's gaining power and manipulating the jedi, but not his end goal. So what is it he wants? Well, he sees in the modern day (Well Old Republic era) that the Rakata are basically gone from the galaxy as a force. So, he wants to complete what he originally started. Become the ruler of the Infinite Empire that rules the entire galaxy. So his plans are basically to ride out the jedi until he's ready to take the body for himself so he has a body, infect others with a dark side mind control plague to become his followers, create a new Infinite Empire under his control and conquer the entire galaxy and become the sole all powerful rulers.

So world conquest. A basic, but always fun goal for a villain to have. And once he conquered the entire galaxy he would then turn his attention to outside the galaxy.

Also, I mentioned a Dark Side Mind Control Plague. So anyway, the sith and the bounty hunter recognize that this ghost is a problem and needs to be dealt with. And so outright tell the jedi this and that if he won't get rid of it they will. Which means the force ghost here this.

So what does the Forgotten One do? Well at this point he's powerfule enough to split his essence in two. Remember the body of the sith apprentice to Umbra? The party had it in their med bay for the entire campaign. One night while the party is asleep he splits a part of himself off and has it use the escape pod to run off in that sith's body since it's completely empty and nothing there to fight back. Doesn't need as much power to manipulate it so can basically keep it as a secondary body he can operate remotely while keeping the jedi as his main body. But if the jedi dies he has a secondary body with his essence installed in it to immediately travel to and make his main host.

Now... The Sith and Bounty Hunter are having none of this once they realize what happened. They track the escape pod and realize it was picked up by a space station. As they had been building a power base for a war with Umbra they had built up several pirate connections to use in place of lacking a proper Sith Empire Armada. So they sent their pirates to lock down the space station and make sure no one gets in or out until they can get there to deal with the escaped force ghost.

The jedi misses a session and we have an excuse he's gone for special training. So, the sith and the bounty hunter take this chance to go to the space station themselves while the jedi is away and they won't be observed by the Forgotten Run. Things are strange when they get there, and the station is literally on fire.

First off, they find the body of the sith apprentice. And this time it's not only empty but the body is dead again. They correctly deduce that it moved on to another host. But they run into a problem.

Force Zombies.

Basically a bunch of the random citizens of the colony act as if they're in a daze and don't understand anything said to them. But then all start trying to kill the party. And despite the fact they should have all been non force users, they were throwing out things like Force Lighting.

And when the party examines them on Force Vision, finds basically a little seed of darkness planted in them that matches the Forgotten One's Aura.

Dark Side Force Mind Control Plague.

The party meets up with the resistance inside the station still fighting back, and is told not to go to sleep. Because when you sleep is when it gets you and you change. The leader of the resistance helps them track down the current host body, who is inhabiting the body of a small girl and building some kind of antennae that the party figured out would actually allow him to extend his force powers to broadcast them to far away planets and influence them from afar to repeat what he's doing here.

Party kills the host body even though it's a little girl as basically learns the hard way these people are already dead. They're just hallowed out shells to be used as puppets by the Forgotten One. Then they destroy the antennae and make sure it's destroyed to a point it can never be rebuilt.

At that point, the Sith, who is now a Sith Lord with some political standing, forcefully recruits all the survivors of the event into his power base. To which there is surprisingly little push back from.

RED FLAG!

He thought it was because they were grateful. In reality, it was because the little girl was not the real host body. It was the leader of the resistance who was. But also knew they wouldn't leave till they thought they had destroyed the secondary Host Body and so created a cover story. In addition, the reason people change when they fall asleep is they've already been infected with the mind control plague. Once they're asleep they lose the ability to fight back being unconscious making it the opportune time to take over. So, the secondary Host Body AND a bunch of infected civilians join the Sith's power base.

And naturally, they start to secretly spread the infection among as many people as possible. Considering multiple stations on different planets each with their own population and them not limiting the plague to just the sith's power base. It's not long before they have millions or even billions infected. But, they keep the mind plague inert, waiting for the opportune time to activate it. After all, if they activate it right away, the party will realize they failed. Better to activate it when they have enough people to recreate the Infinite Empire in numbers. But this time, the empire shall become a single person who has complete control of all the bodies and minds of its members.

So how does this go for the jedi? Well the Forgotten One knows the sith and bounty hunter will tell the jedi what happened. So before that can happen, he tells the jedi that he needs to tell him something, about the atrocities committed by the rest of the party. He shows the party gunning and cutting down civilians at the colony including children. But edits the vision he shows the jedi to leave out the part they were all puppets to make it look like they just killed random innocent people. Something that would be even out of character for the sith but

Jedi: Ok I believe you.

Wow, I almost feel bad at this point cause he's making it too easy for this villain to just take over. The Forgotten One then explains that all he wanted to do was create a secondary host body and hide it somewhere away from the party and that's all he did. Just hide. A blatant lie. But he points out the party was planning to try to find a way to destroy him, which was true because he's freaking ridiculously over the top evil, and so he had only made a spare body as a safety measure and definitely hadn't done anything evil or questionable with it.

Jedi: Ok I believe you.

The party and the jedi meet up again, and the party tells the jedi what really happened. He refuses to listen to them because the party sith is a sith and therefore he can't trust him. No instead he's going to trust the obviously evil dark side force ghost inside his head. Even after at this point having caught it in a lie multiple times about various things it said it was doing or not doing.

So... Anyway the party encounters actual jedis at one point who freak out upon seeing the party jedi because they've never felt so much darkness before. The jedi insists he's light sided and a jedi. With the amount of dark side points he has being in the teens... That's laughable. Might have even hit twenty. Jedi demand if he's really a jedi that he disarm and come with them to be healed of whatever darkness is in them, ghost isn't having any of that, and fully take control of the jedi's body to defeat and consume all of the jedi.

So you know you'd think at this point it would be really obvious he needs to get rid of this thing. But no, that's not that makes him finally decide to get rid of it. It was the amount of darkside points. See, in order to be consider a fallen jedi your dark side points have to exceed your wisdom score. Since he had been pumping wisdom all campaign he was able to get like 20 dark side points without turning. That means 20 times he committed an evil action beyond redemption. This isn't even counting the times he did something screwed up like shoot an unarmed party member who he randomly decided was evil cause said party member killed an enemy unit that was fleeing to get reinforcements in which I let things slide and often with the "I'll withhold the dark point you should get with this action if you stop arguing about it." So he honestly should have already fallen but I was lenient when I really shouldn't have been.

But he finds himself in a troubling situation. His dark side points are now equal to his ridiculously high wisdom score. This means a single dark side will render him as fallen and block out all the light goodies he wanted. So... He finally... FINALLY! Considers that maybe it might be time to get rid of the ghost. Purely for meta reasons of not wanting to ruin his light side build instead of the 50 million in character reasons he has.

Luckily, I had a whole redemption plot planned where he could get rid of the ghost. The party was advised to go to Voss for healing. Now, he was told the ghost was so ingrained into him removing the Forgotten One would permanently de-power him. Chasing power is what got him into this mess. He had to be willing to take a loss of power in the form of -2 con in order to get rid of it. Then, he would have to do a ritual where he would enter his own mindscape, be confronted by his internal demons before finally facing off against the Force Ghost itself and trying to kill it in his mind to be rid of it.

There were a couple of fun twists planned here. One of them, was that if he killed the Forgotten One inside of him, the Forgotten One would survive by making Darth Umbra its main host. She was of course attacking the party's power base and occasionally capturing people and the backup body had used this as a chance to infect her. So the two villains competing for main villain would have become one.

The other twist, was I told the jedi he could get weaker for doing the ritual. What I didn't tell him is he would also get stronger. I had a reward for him, where he would learn a special Force Shield technique that would effectively make him immune to all mind effects. It was also going to be very important in the ending... Because he would have been able to use the Force Shield on the Forgotten One in whatever host body they were in, trapping it there and cutting it off from its connection to all the people it had mind controlled and made into part of him, saving them and trapping teh Forgotten One in a body he can't escape from thus killing the body would kill him.

Now it's very important I didn't tell him about this reward in advance. The point was he had to be willing to let go of power to complete the ritual and defeat the Forgotten One. He had to believe there was no reward beyond being free of the ghost. As a result, if I had told him about the Mind Shield in advance he would have known he was getting an awesome new power and had that be his motivation instead.

Anyway... This is where our Jedi's story ends. Because he's stupid.

He's told he will not survive his mindscape alone and quickly be overwhelmed by his personal demons unless he brings friends with him that he can trust. His other issue in this campaign is refusing to trust his fellow party members even when they're helping him despite him acting more evil than the sith. Also I'm not spending 6 hours running a solo adventure for him. The entire party gets to come.

He refuses to bring the party. Is told both in and out of character if he goes into the mindscape alone he will die. Literally told over ten times counting both in and out of characters being told.

But he says he can't trusts the party so goes in alone, and dies. And then gets mad at me for not balancing the encounters right and I'm like no the encounters for balanced fine. For the entire party to be there. You went in solo to take on a dungeon intended for the entire group despite being told it would get you killed.

So, the jedi's spirit is destroyed. The Forgotten One takes full control of his body and steals the party's starship and flies off to finish his plans.

He would later return as the final boss after Darth Umbra was defeated, revealing that he had been using Umbra as a pawn after her infection to rebuild the antennae on an old Rakata station after the party destroyed the last one.

The party and the Forgotten One fight, and with all the power it absorbed over the cmapaign while living in the jedi, and then even more power absorbed once it had the body to itself to be free to do what it wants it's a powerful foe that would put the entire dark council to shame. The party is now facing a threat that is on par with the Emperor itself.

Somehow, the party turns the tables, and starts to squeak out a win. But the Forgotten One then warns them. It's still connected to everyone that it infected including the ones that the mind plague is inert in. If the party strikes him down, his final actions will be to activate all the inert mind plagues joining everyone with him so that billions of people die, including people the party cares about and much of their own power base if they strike him down.

The party considers briefly, but decides that they have to do it despite the cost. Because those people are already basically dead if he lives as soon as he decides to activate the inert mind plague and chooses to strike him down. Sure enough, true to his word, billions throughout the galaxy instantly drop dead. But the nightmare is finally over.

The party blames the deaths on Darth Umbra, and the super weapon she was building. Which was only a half lie since the super weapon was the force antennae that would allow him to project his powers to a much greater range. And they are forced to dispose of the body of the jedi that the Forgotten One had been riding in, putting the body of their former friend to rest even if he never treated them like friends.

But though the Forgotten One is dead, the impact he left on the galaxy will never heal. Billions dead. Several traumatized, and entire worlds with their infrastructure in tatters things to the people in charge of running things dropping dead. The party has won a victory, but one that came at a heavy cost.

And all because a single jedi refused to turn away from power.

#Halloween #Season of the villains #Star Wars #StarWarsd20 #DnD #Rakata #Forgotten One #Force Ghost #Mind Prison #Jedi #Sith #Bounty Hunter #Table Top RPG #RPG #Sometimes Players Make Really Stupid Choices And You Can Do Nothing But Let Them Play Out

[cartoonemotion]

shifting into advance fethry-posting. after reading the short TNT comic run (which i was able to read thanks to @fethrybestduck !) it occurred to me more than anything i wanted fethry to have friends closer to his own age, who also weren’t sea creatures (obviously mitzi is still #1 tho)

anyways i wanted to adapt my favorite little side characters from the TNT run into the dt17verse and thought it would be really cute an fun to have them be players in a supernatural/sci-fi style ttrpg that fethry’s runs !! they all have their own day jobs, but also a shared interest in the paranormal (which fethry also shares, because he is the man of a hundred thousand interests, but thats besides the point). they also genuinely think fethry’s very great and cool not just bc hes a really good gm (which he is. besides just setting up snacks and stuff he gets so into with voices, music, probably a lot of homebrewing, etc) but they just find his disposition very charming and are happy that hes enthusiastic about their interest in The Unknown instead of thinking its just weird or dumb

i also had this silly fun little fake episode concept in my mind where huey and webby help fethry out as he hosts a game for his group and just instantly fall in love with the concept of ttrpgs (huey’s like “omg an imagination thing i can be good at because it has rules !” and webby basically orchestrated a one-shot campaign of her own when she sent d’jinn on that fake quest in “treasure of the found lamp” so she would be a natural) and then through shenanigans like magic, cursed dice or something, it turns into a “and now the game is real !” thing leading the group to have to fight real ghoulies and aliens and etc just like in the actual comics :vD !!

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #dt17 #duckverse #fethry duck #huey duck #webby vanderquack #leo von cortex #katrina koltik #boysenberry teal #tamers of nonhuman threats #my art

[lamarckianenterprises]

Sucks to be Me But I'm built Different Now

My work got accepted in a Litmag (technically a Zine, CoinOperated Press to be precise) for the first time today, and outside of being thoroughly excited to announce that my humble flier will be included in their next Zine, Dungeons and Dragons Part 2. (Learn more about it on the following link)

I just want to say that looking back, I think a lot of my opinions about my own creative work is based off of like, no one really praising me for my writing. Like I didn't keep writing because people said that I was doing great or good or was talented or whatever, I kept writing because I wanted to get to that point, in spite of the lack of praise not because of it.

Hell, my mother was basically radio silent on my writing after noting that my very first work, the weird fugue state nanowrimo novel that's lost to the sands of time was, and I'm quoting here, "At least he has good grammar." Admittedly I kinda avoided showing her stuff after that, but still.

Outside of her and my even less present father there was my brother who was barely present in my teenage years, and so I basically had jack all for validation outside of an RPing community I immediately antagonized by being an attention seeking edgy teenager who fired out a self insert the GM immediately recognized somehow.

So while it gave me an easy way to keep writing and a sense of community which genuinely helped me practice and learn the craft among other things, it also meant that I didn't really get praise? Or when I did it was from someone close enough to me personally that my brain could immediately dismiss them and their opinions as being invalid as they are tainted by other people's impressions of me as a person.

I think the one bit of praise I registered as genuine was when people said they had fun in the complete mess of a Shadowrun world plot I ran in that RP which is really just a high I've been chasing ever since with every tabletop game I have ever run.

And I couldn't rely on internal validation either because I spent literal years thinking that I was somehow getting worse over time because for some fucking reason I measured that shit based off of output as in the amount of words and paragraphs written down on (virtual) paper as opposed to like, actual quality.

And how hard it was to write, which uhhh, honestly writing has never really gotten easier for me, like I am far more aware of what constitutes 'good' writing now, but it's not like the actual process has gotten much easier, and honestly as the years went on I ended up constraining my own creativity more in vague pursuit of 'better, more respectable and praiseworthy writing'.

Which meant that on top of the tyranny of time eating away at my ability to remember how difficult it was to write in the first place, I had a growing list of hangups and fears that meant that I could always refer back to some past paragraphs I think are real zingers and go, "Damn, where did I go wrong? How am I worse than I use to be?" while ignoring the veritable sea of word vomit, every little thing I did to piss other people off, and the fact that I unironically just naturally obtained more responsibilities as I grew up and obtained a job that slowly crushed my will to live that just made it harder to sit down and write LMAO.

Now I'd love to say that I've thrown of all of my chains, learned to write the proper way, and focused my life entirely towards mastering the craft without interruptions, or that this one acceptance has fulfilled my lifelong desire for validation from a complete stranger once and for all.

Really all I have to say about all this is what you read at the top, "man it sucks to be me but I'm built different," I am in more ways than one no longer the same man who started writing just to have something to do in November, nor am I the man who sat down and chose to make himself when told to make absolutely anything he could want to be.

But then again I am the woman who started whooping and whollering and going, "OLE OLE OLE" and praising God after reading this so like, maybe I'm not that different after all.

#writing #on writing #writer things #journaling #creative writing