#my story takes place in my pathfinder setting and follows the game rules

[dmagedgoods]

A Feather’s Touch

Here’s a tiny story for pathfinder: wotr, very soft, a little kinky, porn with all the feelings or just me yelling my love for Daeran into to void (and overthinking the angel wings my commander got in act V). It plays shortly after the commander’s return from the abyss and before Liotr’s visit. Could be the first of a bunch of oneshots about their relationship in no chronological order, because this man lives rent free in my head. So uh: Male Commander / Daeran, nsfw, light bondage, feathers, erotic tickling, edging, pwp, you have been warned AO3 My commander is a dhampir on angel path, lawful good, despite a certain “the end justifies the means” attitude. "Accept nothing but excellence from yourself": Regill’s birthday quote could be his life motto. He’s conceited to an annoying degree, perfectionistic, proud and ambitious. As a noble himself, he didn’t have an easy stand with his dhampir nature and lost his influence by a scheme against him that left him with no options but to die or to flee. The events of the game brought him to Mendev and the story began. While he likes to indulge in some personal pleasures and is fond of luxury and quality, he still follows a strict set of principles regarding his work, position and the things he expects from others, but especially from himself. It's a certain count who makes him show a more playful side and lightens the heaviness of his responsibilities. Beware: WOTR was my first pathfinder experience, I may mess up lore stuff if not mentioned in the game. ~~~ A feather’s touch Even after days he wasn’t quite used to the changes in his anatomy. If he truly wanted to, he would be able to shift his physics and suppress the angelic traits resulting from his powers. However, that was by no means his intention. They served as a symbol to anyone he encountered, and as a warning no less. Moreover, the wings didn’t restrict him in his movements, if anything they enhanced his possibilities. They only came …, well, connected to a couple of challenges: the need to have his clothes and armor adjusted by his tailor, getting dressed in the morning without the help of a servant and to remember them while passing doors. But despite not having been fond of permanent alterations to his body up to this point, he was more than willing to accept the consequences of his new abilities and handle them like regular Celestials did. For a moment he stretched the wings to loosen them up after all those hours in one position, then he folded them again, crossing them neatly on his back. It had been a long day and there still was work ahead of him. He needed to find a way to integrate the demons that had accompanied him on his way from the abyss and now wanted to serve in his army instead of going back. It was essential to put them under a firm command to have some attentive eyes on them without provoking conflicts with the other fractions. Regill had called it madness – maybe rightfully so –, Ember a great idea, he himself viewed it as a careful experiment. As reprehensible and despicable Alushinyrra had been, he still felt inspired by Nocticula’s vision. What if it was something that turned out attainable in a very different way and with a different purpose no less? – A place of law and goodness instead of chaos and depravity, but accepting of every creature, no matter their origin, appearance or past, as long as they obeyed the prevailing rules. “How is it that the being who defied Iomadae herself always can be found working at ridiculous hours.” The taunting of the familiar voice pulled him out of his thoughts and made the corner of his mouth twitch, but he pretended to stay focused. “Because,” he answered without lifting his eyes from his notes, “different from what she believes of me, I earn what I have and don’t take gifts for granted.” He almost felt Daeran grimace at the statement, nonetheless he came closer through the empty hall and positioned himself behind him. “What about the gifts I make?”, he wanted to know, still in the teasing, playful tone. Salvadore allowed himself to melt towards his touch when his fingers ran down his spine, ruffled his feathers and seemed to explore them. “Those least of all." He didn't try to hide the gentleness in those words. His own hand wandered to the beloved pendant around his neck, source of so much hope and certainty, and not a day went by he didn’t admire the roses. If they were kept in shape by magic or if Daeran had them replaced in regular intervals was a secret he had yet to uncover. “Maybe it takes a responsibility to lure you away from your responsibilities.” Salvadore smirked. “Try pleasure instead.”

“I can’t possibly imagine …” Daeran leaned closer to kiss his neck where the white fabric of his uniform left room for it. “what you mean by this, commander.” Without a warning he grasped a secondary feather and plucked it quickly. Salvadore flinched, a reaction of surprise, not of actual pain. It was only slightly more unpleasant than plucking a hair. He turned around to face him. “What in the name of …” “They say your nails serve as lucky charms.” Now it was for him to grimace, but Daeran continued without a care in the world for his displeasure at this preposterous idea some of his soldiers had developed a while ago: “A feather must be twice as effective, don’t you think? Maybe I’ll use it as a quill.” He stroked the soft vane, a mischievous glint in his eyes. The feather was long and elegant, sleek and of an almost shining white. “It may be of some purpose,” Salvadore answered, voice dark as velvet. “And I’m willing to show you.” “Are you now?” Daeran tried to continue the teasing, but couldn’t conceal his curiosity. Well, as it turned out the composition of his troops would have to wait. “Come.” Salvadore knew he would follow when he left for his private chamber. Their private chamber, with Daeran encouraged to make himself at home in whatever way he pleased. So far he continued to switch between the citadel and his own quarters and Salvadore accepted it and his need for his own refuge. The door barely clicked shut when he had the count pressed against the wall next to it to occupy his lips in a fervent kiss. Daeran was too startled to fight back. He just gave into it, his fingers sunk into the folds of his uniform, holding him close. “Bed,” Salvadore ordered after he brought himself to stop. “My my, aren’t you demanding.” “I promised you a demonstration,” he reminded him. He had used the kiss to wind the feather from his hand. Daeran looked at him, pupils in his bright green eyes slightly widened. With a last hesitation, he followed the command. Salvadore took his sweet time, put the feather on the table and joined the count on the bed. His next kiss was soft and tender, while he shoved the coat from his shoulders, opened buttons and clasps and let his hand trail reverently down his chest to enjoy the feeling of those exquisite fabrics in his fingers and – even more – the heated skin underneath. They often made it a dance, switching the lead and competed for it until one of them took it fully, but today Daeran allowed him to take control without further resistance, even without the attempt to undo his clothes as well, while he removed his shirt, his belt, his boots and every layer in his way. Well, almost, for now. An amused smile played across his features at Daeran's docility. It seemed he was eager to get to know what he had in mind. He paused for a moment, to study all the details he urged to sink into, his athletic, lithe body, every movement of his muscles, the shining gold hair on the soft copper tone of his skin. Intriguing. Breathtaking. Salvadore felt lightheaded and heavy at the very same time. He kissed his way from his collarbone to his chest, wanted to worship every single inch of him. Later, he told himself. Daeran squirmed against his gentle touch and Salvadore had to force himself to stop and step backwards. “Where do you think you’re going?” Daeran complained. “I’m afraid we need some tools.” Said tools were to be found in an unadorned box he kept in his nightstand. When he returned, he held two long white ribbons in his hands. There were spells to immobilize without any effort, but he wanted him able to struggle and squirm. “May I?” Daeran swallowed. “Go ahead.” Salvadore leaned over him and placed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, a gesture of deep admiration, before tying it to the bed, followed by the second, making sure Daeran would be utterly helpless, incapable to escape or protect or touch himself, no matter how urgent the need. His legs would be next, but first … He sat down on the mattress again. Daeran trembled when his lips met the tender inside of his thigh, while his fingers slipped underneath the thin material of his undergarments. “I’m afraid those have to go as well.” “Then why are you wasting time?” “Because, my love, we have all night and maybe longer if I won’t be satisfied by your suffering with the break of day.” Nonetheless, he removed the last barrier of fabric, leaving Daeran’s body defenseless to his eyes and hands and mouth and any agonizing pleasure he decided to afflict. His cock was long, surrounded by a faint trail of golden hair and with the slightest curve while getting harder at his gaze and with the thread he had stated. Despite never showing embarrassment when he watched and studied him, Daeran lifted his head so that his eyes met his. There was a shadow of nervousness on his beautiful features, but clear arousal as well. “The thought seems to excite you.” “I merely wonder what earned me a punishment that severe.” Salvadore tied his ankles to the bed as well, wide enough apart to give him easy access to any intimate body part, while answering in calm sincerity: “A stolen feather of course.” “Disproportionate!” “You doubt my judgment?” He caressed his chest in an almost casual manner, his belly, his legs. The gentle ministrations raised goosebumps along their way. They were too light and Daeran tried to push up into them, to feel the drag of fingertips more firmly. Instead of trying to escape them and to move away, he seemed to yearn for his hands and a more substantial touch. Salvadore watched, mesmerized by the tensing of his muscles while he made his nerve endings prickle with just the edge of sensation. “Are you ticklish, count?” He found out that a slightly firmer touch to his sides caused a delicious flinch, but teasing, ghostly strokes to the back of his knee had him tear at his ties, demanding him to stop. “I take this as a yes. Unfortunately, there is little you can do but to endure it.” He knew his soothing tone had to be frustrating in the situation he was in. Daeran tried his best to avoid the humiliation of reacting to the assault, while his fingers kept wandering, exploring him and every sensitive spot he found. His attempts to keep himself in check were doomed to fail. His tiny movements gave him away, his shivers, the flinching, his lips, when he pressed them tightly together. After a long while, he allowed him a small break and to catch his breath. “Well, it’s time to keep my promise, isn’t it?” He left the bed to get the object of Daeran's crime: The white feather he had plucked from his wing. Salvadore moved it between his fingers. “Remember when you first touched my wings?” “Of course. I’m still not utterly used to them.” “You said they left a strange sensation, like a tingling echo on the skin … I wanted to test this surprising impact from the moment you mentioned it.” “You mean you wanted to torture me from the moment I mentioned it,” Daeran corrected. “Maybe so,” he admitted without batting an eye and returned to his side. Salvadore made himself comfortable next to him, while he let the tip of the feather run over Daeran’s tender lips – the lips he already longed to kiss again –, down his chin, and slowly, oh so slowly, over his throat, making him gasp as he dipped it into the well between his collarbones. The ribbons tensed under Daerans movements when the feather teased its way deeper to the underside of his belly, into his navel and moved along his hips. The count gritted his teeth, probably to stop his curses. His self-control crumpled the moment he focused his attention on his back of his knees once more. A little yell escaped his lips and he struggled in a fruitless attempt to flee. Salvadore showed mercy – after some long moments more – and switched to the sensitive insides of his thighs. The nature of Daeran’s squirming changed abruptly. Now he seemed to try and meet the cruel sensation, to greed the instrument of his suffering in surprising urgency. His arousal hadn’t been muffled by the tickling, quite the contrary, his length stood rigid and in a slight shade of purple. To experience the ticklish sensation so close to it appeared to cause a vigorous desire for touch. Salvadore felt his own cock twitch in eager sympathy at the view of his beautiful lover, lost in sensation, torn between the wish for it to stop and the wish for more, vulnerable, helpless and completely his. “Please …” It was a vague, undefined request. “Where do you need it?” Daeran only panted while quivering in desire, trying to plead with his eyes without answering his question. Or was he unable to decide if he truly wanted the feather’s touch against his most sensitive body part? “Here then?” Salvadore removed the feather from his thigh to circles it in light strokes around the areola of left nipple, then over the hardened bud itself, again and again, making the count’s toes curl. He gave the neglected one a little pinch, rubbed it lovingly between his fingers and drew a little yelp from ihm. “Or rather here?” The next spot he picked was closer to the place Daeran had so mindlessly begged for: In slow but steady movements he drew the feather across his balls. Daeran flinched and inhaled into staggering wails. His sweet agony was almost too much to watch without touching himself. But Salvadore resisted the urge. He loved to be in control like this, he would control his own desire as well. At least for now. “Sa…Salvadore, please, gods, ah, stop, not there …” Not there? Interesting. Daeran’s body shook with desperation, sent into severe trembling as he tried to protect himself and his exposed body by the hopeless attempt to close his legs and only succeeded in strengthening his vulnerability to the torment of this section he wanted him to avoid. The more desperate he became for the touch to end, the more and longer he continued the merciless ministrations. He hadn’t been aware that his balls were sensitive to this degree, but maybe this wasn’t the case under regular conditions and he underestimated the impact of the feather. “That’s unbearable! Please … Nghh … Please don’t! Ahh … No … I can’t!” He loved to hear his beautiful voice in so much distress at his ceaseless torture. For a while he focused his attention to the inside of his thighs again, even had the feather travel between the cleft of his cheeks. Daeran whimpered. Gods, he was irresistible. Eventually, the feather continued to glide across his tightened balls, setting his nerves alight while he threw his head back gasping. An intense shiver ripped through him and he groaned when his cock pulsed in helpless misery. It seemed to be too much and too little all at once, his arousal only grew with every moment of this intimate agony. Salvadore placed one hand on his belly in an almost calming gesture, felt the tensing and losing of his muscles while he tortured him. A constant stream of pleas echoed through the room and he smiled to himself, amusement mixing with the warm bliss deep inside. He didn’t stop before Daeran’s face was wet with sweat and tears. In an act of mercy and without a warning, he closed his hand around his pulsing length while leaning closer to gently kiss his shaking lips. The hot skin between his fingers was slick with precum. He held his hand completely still, but allowed Daeran to move into it in little urgent, desperate thrusts. His composure was long gone. Without a second thought about his pride, he gave into the need and the irresistible temptation of the firm grip he had yearned for so badly. It was not until he panted heavily, seconds from his much-desired relief, that Salvadore let go of him completely, leaving him to a wave of intense frustration instead. “No!” The cry sounded panicked and bewildered at once at the cruel bluff he had pulled. His hip twitched upwards in an useless attempt to get some friction against his straining cock. Unfortunately, the effort only served to deepen his despair. After some more fruitless seconds he let out the most pleasant little whine, followed by a well-deserved insult: “Bastard.” Salvadore hummed in agreement, but gently stroked his thigh, as if to help him through the torment of the sharp edge he had forced him to endure. “Calm down for a moment. You must have been close.” Once more he was captured by Daeran’s view, his golden hair a mess, his face tense with unbearable need, rage and desperation, his body tied down and completely at display in this vulnerable state. “I love to see you like this,” he admitted, voice deep and sincere and heavy with arousal. “Moments from orgasmic bliss, but unable to reach it, the hunger in your eyes you can’t conceal, tensing and struggling and gasping, while you’re left to throb and pulse in unfulfilled desire.” Daeran let out a little moan at his words. His hip twitched once more. Salvadore took the feather he had lost in the sheets. They weren’t done with their game. “Let’s find out if you can find relief by this feather alone.” Daeran’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “You can’t be serious! I … I’m not sure I can.” “Then this is going to be a tortuous night for you … And a tortuous morning.” He stroked the silken tip up his shaft and back down, caressing it in a consistent movement from all sides. It didn’t take long for Daeran to try and thrust against the softness and the prickling sensations the feather caused. “Please … I need to.” “Feel free. You have my permission.” He gritted his teeth, focused on the pleasure through the ticklish lightness of the touch. The feather danced over his glans in small maddening circles, around the ridge, over his frenulum. The closer he got to the very tip of it the more effect it had on him. He poked the pointed end of the feather gently into the wet little slit and made him squirm with need. Salvadore moved it faster, tickled the head in swift little licks. Daeran’s breath became shallow. During the months before the Abyss he had learned those telling signs and reactions, had taken them in with bliss and fascination. Daeran’s body tensed even further, he gave a sharp little gasp at the peak of sensations. Salvadore wrapped his hand around his cock, this time with no intention to cut his pleasure short, but to strengthen and enlarge it. He stroked him in a firm rhythm, moving his thumb over the silken glans. Daeran’s entire body convulsed in rough intensity, his head dropped back in a silent shout of his name. Salvadore didn’t care if he needed all the air he could get, sealed his mouth with a fierce kiss while he felt him tremble and shake and continued to hold and stroke him till the sensations ceased and he became calm in his arms. His own heart pounded too loudly, overfilled with emotions and love for the man pressed against his body. For a long moment neither of them moved, they only listened to their breaths, felt into each other's heat and Salvadore endured the unfulfilled throbbing in his crotch, just let the desire pull and swell. Eventually, he forced himself to move away from Daeran and started to free him from his bonds. With a groan, the count sat up and rubbed his wrists. His vigorous escape attempts had caused the silk of the ribbons to leave some sharp red marks, despite the softness of the material. Remarkable. “No healing spells,” Salvadore demanded. They would heal by natural means in a few days anyway. Daeran chuckled. “Such a bold request. You are aware that you won’t see them underneath my clothes?” “Another reason to remove them more often.” Daeran smirked at him and managed to look mocking, despite the state he was in: “Surely, I don't have to remind you that you are the one too busy for your own good.” Well, that much was probably true. Daeran picked up the feather he had lost during the end of the game. “What a malicious little thing.” “Not a lucky charm in the end?” “I wouldn’t say that. Besides …” Before he was able to react, Daeran had knocked him over and pinned down onto the mattress, pushing his thigh between his legs as if to check for his still hard erection and coaxing a moan from him. “We are far from done here, commander.”

#pathfinder wotr #pathfinder: wrath of the righteous #daeran #daeran arendae #commander x daeran #knight and dae #wotr #dmagedtexts #my writing #knight commander salvadore #oc: salvadore #a feather's touch

[welcometokantrias]

What Is The Kantriverse?

The Kantriverse is a setting that started out when I created a fictional country, Kantrias, and alongside a number of friends that I had, in intermittent periods between 2012 and 2014, with a brief resurgence in 2017, expanded on. We also used Kantrias as a vehicle for playing in the game NationStates, as a sort of 'clan' (in more common terms) but it is the fictional country Kantrias (and the continent of Bayetz around it) that we built up in stories and little bits of lore detail and conversations and just for fun that I would later take, combine with pieces of other worldbuilding ideas that I had, and then create into a more complete setting that I could tell stories in.

And also just worldbuild the fuck out of, because I like to do that.

As a result of the mixed origins, and many holdovers from the days when I worked alongside my friends to create things, there are some oddities, but I think they add to the charm of the setting.

Some of those oddities include the fact that because a few of my friends at the time were big Game of Thrones/ASOIAF fans, the places they created had names in common with Westeros - a city called Highgarden, and a set if Islands called the Iron Islands. Neither place really resembles it's Westeros counterpart outside the name, and both names are pretty generic.

Other things - such as the existence of the Genasi in Kolyat-Var, are the result of my own D&D and Pathfinder interest - and in general, while some of the more obvious stuff has been filed off, the D&D and Pathfinder influence can be pretty obvious if you know what you're looking for, and indeed, I have run multiple pathfinder games in this setting, though I've had to make some alterations to the setting to fit the assumptions of Pathfinder's actual play.

But none of this really says what the Kantriverse actually is.

The Kantriverse is a fictional world - the name of the planet is something I don't have, and frankly the people of the world may just call it 'the planet' because why not - and plays host to a number of continents. The three that have ever been established are Bayetz, Guayas and Kholesun. Of those Bayetz is the center of the action in terms of what got and has gotten worldbuilding attention, and of course, the Kingdom of Kantrias and it's capital city, also named Kantrias, was the main focus.

The Kantriverse is a world of magic, but the magic tends to be fairly practical, and direct, and follows generally predictable and understandable rules - to put it in TV tropes terms, Magic A is, broadly speaking, Magic A. Of course, the rules underpinning magic are no more one hundred percent understood than every single rule explaining how reality works in our world, but they are understood mostly.

It is a world where magic can do a lot, but it's generally direct, perceivable, limited effects. It's a world that, broadly, works like our own - gravity, animal life, the way minerals work, et cetera - but it's also a world where dragons once dominated the skies, where caverns and tunnels deep underneath the earth house entire peoples and nations, and where the gods - distant though they often are - are real and give power to their followers.

It is a world of powerful states, fallen empires, and rising powers. It is a world where empires that were once great have been laid low - and sometimes, they might even be making a resurgence. It's a world not just of humans, but of centaurs, dwarves, lizardmen, kitsune, and more.

It is a world where demons and angels exist and can be conjured, but as beings that are pure ideals given form - and quickly find themselves ill-at-ease in a world of grays and nuance, complexity and imperfection. It is a world of spirits often barely understood, and ancient magics even less understood, if even active at al.

It is also a world where ranks of soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder and fire muskets at the enemy. Where ships bearing canon and powered by sails clash for control of the trade lanes, and where airships have begun to challenge the great Rocs for command of the skies. It is a world where new factories powered by coal and magic, structures of steam and gears and pistols, churn out white and black smoke, covering the sky, bringing with it it disease and progress, poverty and wealth. It is a world where clockwork constructs and old style golems can be built to fight the battles of their makers, and where bizarre, occult secrets that break all known rules of magic can sometimes be wrested from reality.

It is in this world that Kantrias sits as the most powerful and wealthy nation. It is in Kantrias that the House of Quilor reigns as the Royal House, where the ancient nobility jealously guards their remaining wealth and privelages in the Senate, and where the elected representatives of the people in the Consistory are torn between those who seek progress and growth and wealth at the expense of all else, and those who seek to see to the needs of the people. Between those who speak only for the narrow interests of new money, and those who speak for the workers, urban or rural, or for the middle classes.

It is in Kantrias that Church and Crown have fought a vicious dance for over a thousand years, where the pagans are persecuted, but not every faith that lies outside the Church counts as pagan. Where renegade covens of witches are hunted by the Ministry of Security and the Inquisition both - but rarely do they work together.

And yet, despite Kantrias's wealth and power, it is not unchallenged on the world stage. The Empire of Voluz, once the great powers of the North, seeks to modernize under a new, reforming dynasty, while the ancient, stagnated Telvir Ascendancy threatens to dust off ancient magics and embrace new technologies both, to stave off the corrupting influence of Kantrian ideas - and of Kantrian influence over states that should rightly be their vassals.

Even Kantrias's allies are hardly content to be merely aids to Kantrian power - the snakemen of the Kingdom of Kharash may be allied with Kantrias against their old enemies in the Ascendancy, but they look in askance as Kantrias courts the lesser states of Guayas to be their vassals in all but name, rather than Kharash's. The Commonwealth of Aurelia may consider Kantrias the lesser evil than Voluz, but the economic hegemony of the Kingdom of the Gavel and the Sword is hardly universally beloved by that realm.

Kantrias is a nation of wealth and power, and for the average Kantrian, even the poor ones, life is generally good, generally safe, generally positive in outlook. But in any great Kingdom, exceptions exist, and with wealth and industry allowed to run amock in the name of the Queen's desire for military adventurism, and with wealth always begetting more wealth when left unrestrained, and when heretics and pagans join forces with disaffected witches and separatist rebels, danger can only grow.

The Kantriverse is a world of steampunk, intrigue and empire - it is a world of war and adventure, of ancient history and a glorious future.

The world turns, Kantrias is, and the Kantriverse continues.

#Worldbuilding #Meta-Post #What Is The Kantriverse? #Overview Post

[tlaquetzqui]

Had my elves buy a little bottle of pepper sauce for a human sacrificial feast, because they can barely taste the things humans make (having like a quarter as many tastebuds, being carnivores not omnivores).

Then I discover prestidigitation, a 0th-level spell that can be cast infinite times, can flavor foods. Oh, I say, but they can’t cast that during a ritual, that would be super rude (you have to say spells in a clear voice if you don’t use the Silent Spell metamagic).

Then I discover prestidigitation can be cast an hour before and used to create any of the possible effects the whole time. Well shit. Guess I’m rewriting a scene.

#fantasy worldbuilding #my story takes place in my pathfinder setting and follows the game rules #i realized from writing science fiction that having rules i didn't make up actually makes me more creative because i can't cheat #as chesterton said 'my favorite part of a picture is the frame'

[utilitycaster]

Actual Play: How it works

This is a collection of how I think of actual play as a medium, because TTRPG actual play is a unique one - a combination of improvisation, a rule set, and randomizing elements. This isn’t fully comprehensive, and I may add to it in the future as I come up with more ideas. I’m also thinking of providing some examples/more in-depth stuff for the items in separate posts, so please let me know if that’s something you would want.

Most of the observations here heavily skew towards D&D and Pathfinder actual play, as they are what I know best. Other systems I’ve listened to (PbtA, Cortex, Savage Worlds) fit in here as well, but this may not apply to all actual play, particularly GM-less games or games that are primarily played as one-shots.

Finally, and I say this only because it is a recurring problem on the social media that I happen to find incredibly irritating: you are also welcome and encouraged to have other opinions, disagree with me, dislike all of this, etc. If you have things to say, my inbox is the best place; this is too long for multiple reblogs and this is a sideblog so replies are tricky. However, if you are the kind of person who is inclined to say things like “Actually, there was an exception to this rule! It’s in the backmasked audio at 06:59:32 in the outtakes of episode 192c of Dungeons and Discotheques! :)” I would like to provide you with this actual play line quote from Adaine Abernant in Fantasy High: I think that you feel like you have a lot to offer, and please take this the right way... you don't.

Onto the thoughts, below the jump!

On narrative devices and rules and the random element:

Foreshadowing is possible, but limited to specific circumstances. A GM can (and should) foreshadow! The point of foreshadowing is to set expectations, and GMs should have hints that indicate things about the world that the party may encounter later, provide potential plot hooks, or otherwise provide the party with information. Similarly, players can do things that nod towards as of yet unrevealed elements of their backstories. However, it is impossible to deliberately foreshadow plot resolutions, because it is unknown what they will be. That doesn’t mean that in retrospect things may happen that echo back to earlier events, but the intent to foreshadow was not there - it’s a happy accident.

I don’t want to say normal narrative rules don’t apply because what are the normal narrative rules, really? However, I think an important thing to emphasize is that narrative satisfaction is not guaranteed. This is especially true if the cast has agreed character death is an option, but even beyond that, an unlucky or lucky roll can seemingly cut an arc short or take things in a weird and unforeseen direction. Because there is an element of randomness, randomness will occur. This, along with the character agency I discuss later, is one of my favorite things about actual play. It strips out the need for a moral or message or specific beats - not that those can’t arise, but they can’t be forced - and as such it can make for unusual, creative, and very true-to-life stories even in a fantasy setting.

On character role, viewpoint and agency:

Actual play stories have an ensemble of viewpoint characters (the PCs). This is perhaps the clearest restriction that exists, at least in all of the game systems I’ve mentioned. There is no good way to depict NPCs acting on their own unless the PCs have a way to observe them, unseen (magical or mundane). It is extremely difficult to have one player play multiple PCs, and if a player leaves there is not a good way to recast their PC. This doesn’t mean NPCs can’t do things with each other offscreen that have implications for the story, nor that PCs can’t come and go or become NPCs, but it does mean a good GM is very careful about NPC interactions because it gets very boring and non-collaborative very quickly to watch someone talk with themselves.

The PCs hold a level of agency that characters in other media do not. Statements about how the characters have a mind of their own in original fiction aside (sidebar: I am team ‘they don’t, you just didn’t realize that the way you wrote their personality and the way you wrote your plot conflicted until you actually started writing it out, which is very understandable’) PCs do in fact have a mind of their own separate from the GM and from each other.

Something I like about this is that unless you are coming up with conspiracy theories regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the players themselves (in which case I think you’re both a creep and a weirdo (derogatory)) or if the GM is not respecting player agency (which I feel is usually very easy to see; see below for more on that) you do not get cases of “these characters are together simply because the author felt like pairing them off” as can happen in scripted media. Any romantic relationship is, inherently, a mutually agreed choice between the originators of these characters, and more generally any plot or relationship necessarily needs to have something that appeals to all characters involved. It may be as simple as “these are my friends and I want to keep hanging out”, but, despite this being improv, it’s a medium where saying “no” is always an option.

With that said there is still room for players to be uncooperative or selfish. It’s rare, but it does exist, and I’m personally of the opinion that it’s in part the GM’s responsibility to have a conversation with that player and to not play into their attention grabbing. That said, with one notable exception, all the accusations I’ve seen about this have seemed to me to be more “I don’t like this player/character/ship/arc and I am going to claim they are stealing focus, despite it being justified,” and not genuinely about a player being obnoxious.

Agency separate from the person who creates the world is perhaps the most unique element of actual play and at this point I’m going to talk a little about how a good GM fosters that.

I’ve said before that when a GM has things happen that are not at least mostly a direct response to character actions, they are typically either world-building or a hook, and can be both. I think of this sort of as a variant on Chekhov’s gun, actually; the gun doesn’t have to go off, ultimately, in actual play, but it is saying the following:

This is a world where there are guns hung on the wall sometimes.

Someone else might do something with this gun.

You can attempt to do something with this gun before they do.

And then the players decide how they want to interpret it and what they want to do, and the dice indicate the level of success in doing so.

A good GM should encourage the players to explore and be creative, and more than anything, reward agency. This doesn’t mean rewarding it with success; rather, it means if someone explicitly indicates they want to interact with an element of the world, you should give them the tools such that eventually, they can try to do so. You can also give them reasons in-game why they should change their mind, or make it so that it’s almost certain to fail if that is reasonable, but if you are trying to flat-out shut it down without providing an in-world reason why, the cracks will almost certainly show.

One important thing to remember about GM-ing: GMs will probably come into the game with some ideas of what’s going on in the world, and some level of understanding of what the world looks like. That will be influenced by the players, both in terms of the consequences of their actions and choices, and also by what the players are interested in. Which is to say: even if there is a session zero, and the GM states a specific premise, that can change! Characters develop, player interests change, dice rolls do weird things, and so a good GM absolutely must if not kill their darlings at least remove, recycle, and adapt them based on the direction of the game and motivations of the characters. Even in a plot-driven campaign, the players and GM and what makes them happy needs to drive the story, because fundamentally, this is a game that should be fun. Which brings us to...

On the Watsonian and the Doylist in actual play:

Stepping back for a second: the context in which people are creating fiction influences them. End of sentence. It’s ridiculous to think it doesn’t. This means everything from political events and worldwide trends, to the media the creator is consuming or has consumed, to personal life events. There are always going to be in- and out-of-universe explanations for choices in fiction.

In actual play, the players and GM know the underlying rules of the world, and it’s difficult to truly split the party and have everyone not involved leave in a way that feels fun, so everyone always has information that they can’t really use in-game. Also it’s a fully improvised medium that is primarily theater of the mind, so unconscious choices, misunderstandings, and accidents are frequently not edited out, and people are human. Which is to say I think it’s important to take this into consideration in one’s analysis; it’s not that you can’t incorporate a Watsonian reason for something that happened, but Doylist reasons are given a weight that they may not have in an edited work.

Three of the Doylist reasons beyond the misunderstandings and accidents I wanted to cover are metagaming, awareness that this is for an audience, and character knowledge.

Metagaming exists in many TTRPGs, and it’s not actually inherently bad. When a DM in D&D says “that just hits” you get an idea of the AC of the creature, and you know your own attack rolls, and you can make decisions based on that, when, in a ‘real’ fantasy battle scenario, you probably wouldn’t gain all that insight from a single hit. The rules of the TTRPG are considered part of normal acceptable metagaming. There’s also the more general one; if you start the first session in a tavern, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will interact and form an impromptu group and not just quietly drink their ale and leave - basically, the rules of improv still apply. This is a good thing. And finally, there’s the acknowledgement that you are people with feelings and this is a game and so if someone is upset you stop, or you have discussions about consent between sessions that inform actions in-game. Metagaming just gets obnoxious when someone rolls a nat 1 and then argues that this is obvious information and they should know, or looks up every monster in the manual when you encounter it instead of playing true to the character’s knowledge.

In actual play, the ‘hey fellow tavern-goers, would you like to be a group’ form of metagaming, the “oh right this is a story and we should move the story forward,” is even more important than in home D&D games. This is where I recommend listening or reading some Q&As or watching some after shows, because you’ll hear players talk about this. A 5-hour shopping episode or extensive foraging can get boring to watch or listen to (and unlike accidentally boring or frustrating things, are pretty easy to predict and avoid). On the flip side, a risky choice might seem more appealing when you know there’s an audience who would love the payoff.

I am personally, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I said about player dynamic conspiracy theories and randomness (or, outside of this post, my strong dislike of certain popular fan theories), not a big fan of creators catering to audiences’ every whim...but it’s unavoidable that they will take the audience experience in mind.

Finally, character knowledge, which is the opposite of metagaming - when a character knows something the player doesn’t. This is sometimes covered with, for example, GM statements like “you would know, as a person with history proficiency, that this country is actually in a regency period.” If the character had, in improv, before the GM had a chance to say that, mentioned the king, that’s just because the player did not know that and had made an assumption.

Personally I find going deep down the rabbit hole with things like this - “why doesn’t this character, who CLAIMS to be from this country, not know this?”, or clearly OOC statements - tends not to actually spark any interesting theories, but that is, ultimately, an opinion.

A few final thoughts on different formats of actual play

True livestream/live-to-tape (Critical Role, Into the Motherlands, and the second season of Fantasy High): the main thing to keep in mind is Doylist explanations are even more important because there is quite literally no editing. Also, there will possibly be some of those more boring stretches or even a little OOC metagaming discussions within the structure of the game, because there’s no way around it.

Editing, but primarily just to remove long explanations/math and doing soundscaping (NADDPod, Rusty Quill Gaming): Pretty similar; a lot of them even make the choice to leave in OOC metagaming discussions, so it’s mostly that there are fewer cases of people slowly adding numbers.

More extensive editing and possibly some predefined other elements (TAZ, most Dimension 20 shows): this may fall into a more traditional story structure. It’s not to say that there won’t be surprises, because the players do still have agency, but the ‘rails’ might be a little more apparent; there might be some DM monologuing done after the fact (beyond just cleaning up the audio) or choices that were not scripted per se, but not exactly improvised either (think how D20 tends to have pre-set battle maps and earlier seasons had a pretty strict RP/Battle structure.

Somewhat relatedly there are broad story structures, which is more of a spectrum, ranging from sandbox (Critical Role) to very clearly GM-driven missions (TAZ Balance and, to an extent, Amnesty); nearly all of the other shows here fall into a structure of “here is your overall goal, how precisely you get there is up to you although, like any GM, I will provide in-story information on where it may make sense to go that will often funnel you towards specific places.”

I do have a theory that since TAZ Balance in particular was an entry point for so many people, it takes them time to adjust to the more sprawling, unpredictable, and difficult-to-organize stories other actual play can have, but ultimately it is a matter of personal preference and all of these still fall into the category of actual play.

#long post #today in: unsure if anyone wants to read this but that has also never stopped me not even once #and writing this was fun

[chinmaster]

An examination of RPG player behavior

How do the rules of a system encourage certain behavior? It's a massive topic and I'm only going into a surface level exploration- the following ideas each deserves its own lengthy examination but as of right now I don’t think I’m the person to do that examination. Additionally I'm sure that there are other areas that I will not have thought to cover that are at least as important as the ones I have. I would be happy to learn what others have found to affect player behavior that I haven't covered here.

I also want to be clear: I’m going to be using Dungeons and Dragons as a comparison system for a lot of this essay, but this is not a complaint piece about Dungeons and Dragons. The game is well known enough that I think it’s useful as a metric and, to me, it seems consistent enough in what it wants players to do that it seems useful as a 'control' game. It tells the sorts of stories it wants to tell very well, and if that’s the sort of experience you want then I would recommend using it. I should also clarify that none of these points are mind-control- playing a game that spends a lot of time detailing its investigative aspects doesn’t mean that a player is automatically going to engage the way the game is encouraging them to. But, just like advertising, I don’t think anyone is immune to being swayed to a certain extent by various factors.

Individual taste

Obviously, different people are interested in different things. For example, I really like delving into the way magic works in a setting (lore-wise more than mechanically, though the two generally have an effect on one another) and I frequently have an impulse to make characters that would interrogate it. So even if you’re in a system that doesn’t encourage certain behavior you’re going to have players that want to explore things that interest them. But I also believe that the game you play has an effect on player behavior as well.

Depth of which it delves into a topic

There is an inherent implication, to me at least, that the more time and energy that are devoted to explaining something, the more important it is. If someone spends 10 minutes trying to explain one concept to me and two minutes trying to explain another I’m going to come away with more of a focus on the first. Dungeons and Dragons devotes a vast amount of time to statistics, abilities, and strategies for combat situations. It has whole books detailing the combat capabilities of potential foes and the chapters in its core rulebook concerning what sorts of actions one can take in combat is much more granular than most of its other systems. Other things that a character could do in the game are less detailed/specific. To contrast, Blades in the Dark spends much of its time detailing ways characters can increase their chance of succeeding in tasks and how to avoid consequences when the dice don’t go their way. There is much less focus on detailed combat rules. Hence, at least to me, Blades encourages players to focus on their skills and ways to use them while D&D encourages thinking about ways to apply things to combat.

Amount of time it takes to deal with different kinds of problems

How does a character in Dungeons & Dragons locate something that is hidden from them? A single Investigation roll can do that, and we can just kind of elide the time that it takes to do so, so we can get to the interesting bit- how it affects the story. A combat though, even with an enemy that poses no real danger and has no significance to the ongoing narrative, requires a more in-depth scene to deal with. The game itself gives brutalizing a hapless goblin more ‘screen time’ than a potentially plot-defining revelation. Now, much of this focus is obviously up to the GM and the players, as player focus on a thing can extend its screen time a huge amount. But this discussion isn’t about how GMs and players focus on things- it’s about how a system in and of itself focuses on things. D&D’s rules played as written pushes more to the combat side of things. Ars Magica devotes a hell of a lot of time to magical research and innovating ways to learn and cast spells. It is likely that a lot screen time in a session is going to be spent in a wizard’s laboratory and how things are going with their experiments. So, to me, that time spent in the wizard’s lab is going to be more impactful on the game than what is comparatively little time spent blowing up orcs. The fact that certain things in a game receive more of this screen time is naturally going to cause players to focus more on those things.

Reward system

It might be pretty obvious but I still think it’s worth mentioning a game’s reward system. What does a game explicitly give to players that might encourage them to do things and for what reasons does it do so? Character growth is a pretty common one, but there is also narrative control, success in goals, and special considerations. Once again going back to Dungeons and Dragons, the only thing that is explicitly rewarded in concrete terms is combat. There is also advice for awarding experience points for social or exploration challenges, but they are much looser and mostly up to the GM’s discretion- advice rather than actual rules. As a game in and of itself D&D is only mechanically rewarding killing monsters. In Apocalypse World experience is rewarded for using certain skills selected by the GM (or MC if you prefer) and other players. In my experience, this leads to players angling to use skills that the other players and the GM/MC find interesting. Character success is another reward that can be mechanized to encourage player behavior. In 7th edition Call of Cthulhu, if a roll is a failure then the player may choose to ‘push’ the roll- that is, reroll the dice but with the threat of a worse outcome if they fail again than if they had just left the original roll. This encourages players to be a little riskier with their characters and to tell stories more in line with the source material of individuals getting in over their heads in pursuit of a goal. It rewards this risky behavior with the possibility of turning a defeat into a victory.

Punishment

On the flip side of rewards, a game can also punish behavior that it doesn’t want. Punishments can vary as much as rewards, though they are perhaps not as direct.  To be clear, when I talk about punishment for unwanted behavior I am not referring to real life behavior or even intentional antagonistic in-game behavior. What I mean is that the systems of a game try to lead players to act a certain way and, whether intentional or not, may punish players if they deviate from that course. First edition Pathfinder, for example, tends to assume that players are going to optimize their characters for combat and if they don’t they can pretty easily become overwhelmed by the creatures they face as they advance through the game (this is, of course, assuming that character death would come as a punishment as Pathfinder does. Many other systems view it as less of a punishment and more of an interesting narrative turn). The second edition of 7th Sea, meanwhile, indirectly discourages the powergaming that can be found in something like Pathfinder by ‘flattening’ the combat. Pretty much anyone can excel in it and there’s not a lot of point to trying to optimize it. These diminishing returns are a sort of ‘punishment’ for focusing too much one one thing.

Player character abilities

What a character is able to do in the game is naturally going to affect the sorts of things they are going to do in that game. Dungeons and Dragons focuses a lot on how many hits a character can take, abilities that grant more damage against their enemies, spells to control a battlefield and blow things up, and things of that nature. There are certainly options that enhance a character’s ability to do other things as well, but there are far fewer of them than those that focus on death dealing and mayhem making. If your only tool is a hammer etc. The fifth edition of Legend of the Five Rings does have combat, even somewhat of a focus on it, but the characters also have other techniques to employ to a much greater degree than in D&D. There are courtly graces, among other things, that a character can master without ever interacting with the combat mechanics.

GM limitations/advice

I maintain that the GM is just as much a player in a TTRPG scenario as those that are traditionally referred to as ‘players’ though the distinction still tends to be useful and as coming up with even more terminology would be confusing to the point I’ll just refer to the normally held definitions of the two. The limitations and advice given to the GM in a given game is an important factor in player behavior. I have to admit that I’m not overly familiar with the advice/limitations given to a 5E GM as I have not run it, but I do remember back in the 3rd edition days (as well as in 1st edition Pathfinder) there weren’t really any limitations placed upon the GM’s authority and most of the advice centered around the pacing of a session, combat, and how to reward player actions in a ‘balanced’ way. Much of the GMing section was devoted to designing challenging but beatable combat encounters and exactly what kinds of treasure to award for completing the combat encounter successfully. This is naturally going to lead to an increased GM focus on combat and, thus, player decisions that focus on the same. In Apocalypse World and the games that followed the GM is limited in what they can introduce into the narrative and when they are allowed to do so. This opens up space for players to take control of the narrative, generally meaning bending it toward where they want to explore their individual stories. In Paranoia meanwhile, the GM is encouraged to act like a somewhat sadistic dictator which is going to result in player choices that uphold the eternal superiority of Alpha Complex and their good friend the Computer.

Setting

The setting a game takes place in is going to affect a lot of what players are going to feel like they are able/supposed to do. In a game like Good Society, a Jane Austen-style relationship drama, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to try to introduce a quest to seek a magical macguffin being guarded by a violent dragon. Similarly, the setting of D&D is not particularly well suited to exploring a love/hate regency era romance and maneuvering within its rigid social structures. But if you need a dragon fuckin slewn? You’re covered.

The hobby as a whole

This is sort of a meta category but I think it nonetheless deserves some amount of time. Dungeons & Dragons and its contemporaries have a huge influence on the hobby as a whole which I believe does affect how players behave in other games. They place an emphasis on combat oriented exploration with a strong guiding voice from the GM. Games that focus on other things or have different play styles can struggle to land with players that would otherwise enjoy them if D&D didn't set the standard for what a role playing game is 'supposed' to be. The fact that learning other systems can seem daunting can also lead to attempting to just use the D&D ruleset to try to get the experience of those other systems no matter how ill-suited it is to tell those stories.

So what was the point of all this? Honestly, like many of the posts I've written recently, a lot of it is writing down my own ideas for future design reference.  But I think it also may be useful for examining how role playing games affect our thinking and how that can be used consciously by both players and GMs to make a more enjoyable experience. It's important for the game you're playing to match with what people want to do with their characters and disconnect between the two can suck the life out of an otherwise fun experience.

#ttrpg #table top rpgs #thoughts #game design

[theonyxpath]

This is the last week for the Mummy: The Curse 2e Kickstarter and as that gets “wrapped up” on Thursday we’re going to run right from that to set up our booth at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, PA.

Ah, Philly! City of my birth and youth! City of cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, and bad attitudes! I return, anon!

But before that: please check out the Mummy 2e Kickstarter if you haven’t already! We’d love to achieve the next chunk of the Book of Lasting Death and get some more Utterances and Judges in there – but we need your help! If you’ve already pledged – tell your friends! Wander the streets and alert the neighbors! If you haven’t pledged, well here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/mummy-the-curse-2nd-edition

Let’s go out strong! (Like the reverse of the Mummys…)

V5 Chicago Folio illustration by Michael Gaydos

We’ll be coming in strong to PAX Unplugged this coming week, with myself and LisaT, Mighty Matt McElroy, Fast Eddy Webb, Dangerous Dixie Cochran, Neall Raemonn Price, Meghan Fitzgerald, Travis Legge, Danielle Lauzon, and Crystal Mazur attending!

Dixie, LisaT, Matt, and myself will be in our booth handing out our new brochure and answering questions – but most of all, we’ll be directing folks to, and signing them up for, demos in both the booth and at our demo table in the gaming area.

Our table is in Area 119a, we’ve been told, in fact! Look right there in this handy map! (Thanks, Ian!)

Right now, the menu for gaming with the rest of our crew is:

Meghan: Changeling: the Lost 2e and Contagion Chronicle

Neall: Scion Hero 2e and Mummy: the Curse 2e

Danielle: Trinity Continuum and Dystopia Rising: Evolution

Eddy: Pugmire and Fetch Quest

Travis: Scarred Lands and Legendlore 

Crystal: Monarchies of Mau and Chicago by Night

Matt: Scarred Lands and Cavaliers of Mars

So come on by if you want to sit in on a game and we’ll get you scheduled! Plus, with the brochure, we’ll be announcing at least one secret project, and we’ll be glad to answer questions about that.

We’ll also be directing anyone who wants to buy our games to right across the aisle from us at Studio2 – which is just darn convenient! Let me underline that: we aren’t selling books at our booth, Studio2 is selling them for us! Here’s another handy map:

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you folks there – it is a very cool con!

Now, here’s some follow-ups for some things I mentioned last week:

The Pugmire Wolfenoot sale went really well, and both Pugsteady and Onyx Path were able to send nice-sized donations to the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind! Thanks to all of you who participated in the sale and helped us help them!

Our Reddit AMA went fantastically for about 5 hours and many, many, in-depth questions were asked and answered. Thanks to all of you that participated and if you have any further questions and are at PAX Unplugged, we’ll be glad to continue the conversations! I’ll be there with bells on – well, at least one bell!

They Came From Beneath the Sea! illustration by Eric Lofgren

Last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast started out normally, but then exploded into a frenzy of creative ideas and after the dust settled (or the verbal equivalent) Dixie, Matthew, and Eddy had brain-stormed six new games!

Their titles are:

* Game 1: Envelopes and Urban Legends * Game 2: The Calamari of Crime * Game 3: Super Dragon Dining Crisis Tensai: Apocalypse Ultima EX * Game 4: Universal Faultlines * Game 5: Barn Raising * Game 6: Love in the Time of Androids

You really have to listen to get the actual details of these games, and the wacky yet very typical way that they were conceptualized by the Trio, but even the titles give you some idea of the range of genres and approaches they played around with.

While I was listening – like I do every week, Matthew – it struck me that while the gang were riffing pretty wildly, the process is really very typical for a lot of our creative meetings. For years we’ve tried to use the rules of Improv in our game brainstorming. Like, don’t negate what the last person threw out to the group, try and build upon it.

The old “Yes, and…” rather than “No”.

There’s more than enough time to apply critical or realistic thinking to the ideas, first you need to let the ideas pour out.

(And this is actually not easy to do! A lot of our Onyx Path crew are extremely realistic about the challenges inherent to creating projects, and have very strong opinions and likes and dislikes (hard to believe, I know), so holding those comments back can run against our very natures.)

But as you can tell with this Pathcast, or with my riffing with Matthew half a year ago in the UK GamesExpo edition of the Pathcast where we combined Transformers, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Scion, there’s something innately and deeply fun and satisfying to just letting loose with our imaginations!

Which is, I think, the single greatest part of the TTRPG hobby, and why so many of us love it so much. And, in our case at Onyx Path, why we are so excited to create:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

The Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter is now IN ITS LAST WEEK and has passed 200% funding and has over 1000 backers with over a week to go. Backers have already unlocked the Mummy 2e Screen as a Stretch Goal, additional Utterances, and a whole new project: the Mummy 2e Companion!

Please check out this blog from several weeks ago for a description of all the amazing features of this new edition!

Be there to witness the majesty and terror of this new version of Mummy: The Curse! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339646881/mummy-the-curse-2nd-edition

Next Kickstarter: V5 Cults of the Blood Gods!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features an interview with fabulous freelancer Lauren Roy! Available on Podbean or on your favorite podcast venue!

It’s another busy week for Onyx Path and our merry band of fantastic streamers on Twitch this week, with games of Vampire: The Masquerade, Pugmire, Scarred Lands, Aberrant, Changeling: The Lost, Hunter: The Vigil, and more random drop-in games taking place all the time! If you’re subscribed to our channel, you can find some of last week’s games, including Scion as run by Neall Raemonn Price, developer of the game!

What’s more, if you’re a fan of Scion, be sure to check out The Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on Matthew Dawkins’ YouTube channel! It’s only on the second video so far, so there’s plenty of time to catch up. Check out youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

Please find us, follow us, and subscribe to us on twitch.tv/theonyxpath If Twitch isn’t your jam, maybe YouTube is! We’re steadily migrating all our content from Twitch to YouTube, but there’s new videos too! Travis Legge and Matthew Dawkins like to dive bomb the news onto different channels at different times, just to keep everyone on their toes, and this week it’ll be on YouTube again! Subscribe to youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

On redmoonroleplaying.com, Klara Herbol runs Vampire: The Masquerade for Matthew Dawkins and the Red Moon Roleplaying team, while Matthew runs Mummy: The Curse for John Burke, Bianca Savazzi, and Craig Austin from Red Moon! Lots of actual plays of tremendous quality there, for you to check out and enjoy.

Occultists Anonymous are back with more Mage: The Awakening fun right here

Episode 62: Another Round of Darts  The cabal’s plans are interrupted by the arrival of an old acquaintance and have to clean up a mess that isn’t their fault…  https://youtu.be/_JZyq57KNOo

Episode 63: Taking It Offline  The cabal meet with the Phantasm Society in hiding and plan how to stop the Hunters before they become more of a problem.https://youtu.be/zlSrGhu1Eis

The Story Told Podcast interviewed our very own Ian Watson regarding the Trinity Continuum:  http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-41-aeon-interview-with-ian-watson 

And did you miss Mage: The Podcast interviewing Matthew Dawkins about Technocracy Reloaded and other books? Never fear, the interview is right here: https://magethepodcast.com/index.php/2019/11/24/m5-meditations-metanarrative-tools-and-mummy-with-matthew-dawkins/

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

There’s still time to join DTRPG‘s massive sale for Cyber Monday!

https://www.storytellersvault.com/featured.php?promotion_id=CybeM19STV

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/blackfriday.php?manufacturers_id=4261

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we are proud to announce the PDF and physical book PoD versions of both the Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook and Trinity Continuum: Aeon core book are available on DTRPG!

Conventions!

PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th, in Philadelphia, PA. We’re going to have lots and lots of gaming for folks to sign up for, a lot of them featuring our game creators! See maps and things above! 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Going over sketches.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e – Reviewing art that’s already in.

Ex3 Lunars – Just need two artists’ pieces in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contacting two more artists.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Cults of the Blood God (KS) – Art all seems ready.

Chicago Folio – Got cover in this morning.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Going.

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Going over artnotes and dividing stuff up.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Awaiting artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Going over sketches.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Sending out art notes and contracts.

Vigil Watch – Awaiting artnotes.

In Layout

Chicago Folio

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds – Haven’t forgotten it.

VtR Spilled Blood – Josh is working on it.

Pirates of Pugmire

Proofing

Memento Mori – Awaiting Dev comments.

Dark Eras 2 – Aileen working up the cover.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

M20 Book of the Fallen – Backer PDF errata is with Josh.

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

At Press

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD files up and processing.

Aeon Aexpansion – PoD proofs coming.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – At press, proofs signed off on.

Geist 2e Screen – At press, waiting for proofs.

DR:E – At press, waiting for proofs.

DRE Screen – At press, waiting for proofs.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – Putting up PoD files.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Celebrating Wikipedia-weirdness, in that it’s really easy to see (and construct) all sorts of patterns from the items in it. Like these all here on December 2nd, Cuba’s Armed Forces Day:

1956 – The Granma reaches the shores of Cuba’s Oriente Province. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement disembark to initiate the Cuban Revolution.

1961 – In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist–Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.

1976 – Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado.

1986 – Death of Desi Arnaz, Cuban-American actor, singer, businessman, and television producer (b. 1917)

Busy date!

#Onyx Path Publishing

[queersplendent-deactivated]

So I'm in a Pathfinder game now

Under a cut for rambling.

[[MORE]]

Background for this is that my GM and I are both autistic, and while he's been running a Marvel Super Heroes game with me for years, he really wanted to run the Kingmaker adventure path, and I was initially the only player signing on. Once it looked like no one else was interested, I rolled up my sleeves and made a party of three characters to run, by myself, simultaneously. You know, as one does. (I've been doing it in the Marvel game forever anyway.)

My sister agreed to play at the last minute, but not only was the module balanced for four characters anyway (the GM planned to tweak as we went for three), but I was already deeply invested in my concepts and had micromanaged lists of equipment, so we just went ahead with me running three characters and them running one.

But the GM also altered Kingmaker, setting it years after the module usually starts, after the "original" adventuring party died on mission and now a new one is being sent. So we're individually traveling to this trading post, having individually signed on with a mercenary company for an excursion into the Stolen Lands. The quest is ostensibly just to kill the bandits there, not to settle the Greenbelt, since that failed spectacularly before.

Drama happens -- Pöl is so taciturn no one realizes she's part of the company when they arrive later and find her covering guard shifts, and Laura gets the usual welcome that tieflings get and threatens to clock someone with a porridge pot. Ismene avoids anything resembling making friends. Xian shows up in the middle of the night without being let in by the guards and causes a scene when discovered in the morning. But whatever, it's fine, all four PCs are there and waiting for the rest of the company to arrive.

This does not occur. Instead a bunch of flashy lights happen, and a huge fuckoff nymph shows up in the sky, and suddenly the Greenbelt is cut off from the outside by a big grey cloud and all the forest critters are strangely mutated, and general fey-related dickery is suspected. The rest of the company will now not arrive, and We're It.

So of course some bandits show up to take over the trading post, having shat a brick when dimensional stuff started and looking for a defensible position.

The bandits are very sorry in short order. Laura, an ex-paladin brawler, begins the fight by scoring a knockout on one guy's horse, at which point he's taken out while prone by Xian, with her 3d6 of sneak attack. Pöl gets a couple with her dueling sword, and Ismene snipes with her crossbow.

Once all five lesser bandits are dead, the bandit leader takes off, pushing his horse for extra speed; Laura mounts a now-riderless bandit horse and nabs Ismene, and they go haring off after the leader at breakneck speed. After being plinked so much he takes a potion, he finally looks like he might escape into the treeline, so Ismene... shoots the horse. This works, and Laura finishes off the bandit. (The horse survived, was given a healing spell, and was walked back to the trading post, where he now is well-tended.)

There's a huge drunken celebration at the trading post, Xian and Ismene do a bardic performance and roll ridiculously high, and things are great. However, the killing of these bandits turns out to have created a time-sensitive issue: the actual bandit commander and most of her better guys are a few days away, and will eventually come looking for her missing men. The party decides to set out the next day to find and clear the camp.

We find the bandits asleep and scout them out, and formulate a plan. See, it turns out that in addition to a brawler, we have one full rogue, one bard-rogue, and one slayer with an emphasis on stealth, so we decide on a nighttime ambush.

Laura is extremely not-sneaky and waits out of visual distance with the tethered horses, wearing a camouflage net and waiting on a signal to let her know if she's needed for abrupt melee; the other three creep up to the bandits' two sentry towers, Ismene hiding in the brush while Pöl and Xian climb nearby trees.

Both bandit sentries are taken out in a single round, unable to alert their fellows, but once kill is too close to the camp and the sound wakes some of them, including the boss lady. She spots Ismene, and shit begins with the piercing whistle that lets Laura know we didn't have time to set up traps or get the rest of them stealthily. Ismene responds to the charging bandit boss by flinging down a vial of oil and a vial of alchemist's fire (generously donated by the first group of highwaymen) as she flees for cover, singeing the boss's face and making her REALLY cranky.

While Pöl tries to distract for Ismene and is quickly surrounded, Laura comes barreling in, ready to start swinging. The bandits decide that no, their boss can handle the literal demon who appeared over by that tree that's on fire, and gang up on Pöl.

Xian is still undetected, having been up the further-out sentry tower, and gets a sneaky kill, then uses Eerie Disappearance to unnerve the bandits; she's secretly a type of kitsune, and her flashing eyes as she vanishes make the bandits think maybe she's a demon also, which concerns them.

The fight is ugly, and near the end Pöl gets dropped to -1. At nearly the same time, the bandit boss is significantly hurting Laura, and Ismene has run over to heal her with a bard spell. Just before the boss lady can knock out Laura, there's Xian again, sneak-stabbing her from behind and dropping her. The rest of the bandits scatter.

We, however, are not content to let them escape, much like before, and take off after them in different directions. Laura gets one, and then goes back to give Pöl a potion; Ismene uses Expeditious Retreat and Xian follows under stealth, as the last two bandits are running the same way. The GM has broken out proper chase rules at this point.

Ismene eventually plinks one to death with her crossbow, but the other is a bit further out, and the terrain is being a bitch to get through. Xian outpaces her by rolling better against the obstacles, but not by much, so Ismene turns a corner to see the last bandit having his throat chewed by a weird-looking fennec fox, whom she is unaware is actually Xian. This bandit takes at least 20 damage and is now dead. Ismene is nonplussed.

After failing to put two and two together, and also failing to find Xian, she collects the bandits' gear and goes back to the camp, where Laura and the now-awake Pöl are repeatedly filling a waterproof bag at a nearby stream to combat the forest fire Ismene started. Xian herself shows up not long after with a story of falling into the river during the chase and getting temporarily swept away, which the rest of us buy because why not, and also because Xian is 4-foot-7 and that could happen.

Fire is put out, and the bandit boss lady is hogtied (since we'd killed the other bandit leader and learned exactly zero of worth from his minions, we have interrogation in mind), we loot the camp and the bodies, and we head back for the trading post.

So the bandit boss lady turns out to be basically a local boogeyman who personally cut off the hand of the guy who runs this trading post, and we just turn up, four days after we'd left on what the whole post assumed was probably a suicide mission, and dump the boss lady at the feet of the guard captain. Everyone wants to buy us drinks.

That's where we are now! We've recovered some of the OG Greenbelt charters and realized that they're probably still good, and it's not like we can leave the Greenbelt now on account of the dimensional nymph fuckery, so this is Our Turf now. We're beginning to outfit the post itself with the bandit treasure we don't need (loot communists ftw), and plan to sink resources into making it a safe-ish place for us to operate from as we begin to map the area and take out more bandits, not to mention look at the 20+ side quests on the bounty board.

We've agreed: for now, our group is called The Company.

Stay tuned! Will Xian cop to being a fox, solving the mystery of why local fauna decided to end that man? Will Ismene pincushion anyone else or will she just go mad with the prospect of power? Will Pöl learn to socialize? Will Laura reveal her stormy ex-paladin past? Most pressing, will the GM give us enough time to make Craft checks next session?

[sepiadice]

Art Direction of Tabletop RPGs

Dungeons and Dragons is good at being Dungeons and Dragons.

That shouldn't be a controversial opinion, and it's not worded as one, yet I have one friend who derisively labels it as a war game, and another friend who believes D&D is all you need in regards to TRPGs. These two are from distinct eras of my life, and have never met.[1]

My moderate view is such: Dungeons and Dragons is good. It's not the ultimate system, but if you want a western fantasy built on the framework of Tolkien, Fifth Edition is the way to go. You could use a different system, in theory, but no other system has the same reach and stability. Everyone knows D&D, which is valuable.

Its combat and mechanics are a good balance of grit and function, and it's mostly teachable. My friend's 'wargaming' derision is because he believes it doesn't support role-playing well. Something about the guy who wrote Dungeon World saying if it's not in the rules, it’s not in the game.[2] But I've always felt that D&D makes the right decision in not bogging it down with structure and dictating the 'correct' way to role-play.

However, if you want to do anything else (Sci-fi, non-european fantasy, superheroes, Slice of Life), best case scenario the seams will creak in the attempt. D&D is good at being D&D, and that's the limit.

I appreciate D&D. I'll play D&D, happily!

There's a reason I bristle when “DM” is used as the generic term.

That said, I've always had a sort of tonal disconnect when I play D&D, and it's because of the art.

Fair warning, what follows is a lot of personal interpretations and vague mumbling trying to relay a point. I’m not actually an authority on anything.

(Dungeons & Dragons owned by Wizard of the Coast . Image sourced from Wikipedia)

Dungeons and Dragons does not have pretty art. It’s technically well done, and far from ugly, but it’s not actually inspiring. Above we have the cover of the Player’s Handbook, the first thing most new players see. Setting aside that the focus of the cover art for what should be the book about Player Characters is a giant monster man[4], the cover is very orange. The actual people are composed of muted, neutral colors, and the background is vague and out of focus.

It’s not really conveying an air of fantastic worlds and larger-than-life characters (giant wearing a dragon skeleton aside). It coveys oppression, monotony, and “realism”.

(Pathfidner owned by Paizo. Image sourced from Wikipedia)

Pathfinder’s core rulebook, on the other hand, is colorful. Look at that big, bright dragon![5] Sensibly dressed Fighter Man’s brown clothes are still bright enough to pop him out from the green-grey dungeon background[6], and Fantastic Sorceress’s red dress is also bright and helps frame the Fighter as her hand glows with magic.

While both covers feature a woman with an orb of magic, D&D’s cover shows magic as contained and lighting a small space, while Pathfinder’s magic is big and trailing, hinting at movement.

Actually, D&D’s mage girl doesn’t have a cohesive movement. Is she falling from above? Jumping in from the left? Where is she going? It doesn’t really follow in a meaningful way.

Anyways: color. Yes, yes, I know the plague of brown and and muted tones is a much whined about criticism, and it might seem odd from someone calling himself SepiaDice, but neutral tones have their place; usually as background and supporting other colors to pop more.

Besides, Sepia has a noble history in film, the brown range isn’t a common image color, and Sepia is fun to say.[7]

Color choice is very important. Bright colors draw the eye and make visuals more distinctive. Bright colors also denote and bring energy to things. Dull colors are used for locations meant to be calm and sedate. If you want the characters and locations to seem fun and full of life, you fill it with bright colors.

Everything breaths, adventure can strike at anytime!

Dull colors, and it’s hibernation. People are around, but they don’t seem to enjoy it.

But let’s turn to the visual storytelling: what does each cover tell you about life in their setting?

D&D: lots of posing to look fancy, but there’s no real sense of energy. Jumpy Magerson’s weird Megaman hop has been mentioned, of course. The Giant has a look of dull surprise as he drops Jumpy Magerson,[8] as he holds a sword in the non-active hand. Foreground fencer man is wide open, holding his own foil up and away from where it might accidentally jab anyone. The locations is… orange? Looks like there might be lava geysers?

Patherfinder: A dragon roars at its enemies! Teeth bared, tongue coiled, tendons on display! Wings unfurled to make it seem larger! The fighter is yelling back at the dragon, his weapons mid-swing! Shoulder forwards to defend the rest of the body! The Sorceress is holding a firm stance as she casts a spell that crackles with arcane energy!

Pathfinder’s cover tells a story of epic combat, fizzly magic, and energy. D&D’s cover tells a story of two adventurers existing in a space also occupied by a giant.

Now, both of these systems have the same ancestry, as Pathfinder is an iteration on D&D 3.5.[9] But one sparks more joy when I look at it.

But let’s do another case study. I’ll need an audience volunteer, and my brother’s the only person immediately on hand.

I’m going to make him list three qualities of goblins real quick:

Green

Wimpy

Sneaky

Awesome. Don’t know if the green text translated, but those are what he wrote. Give him a hand!

So, with those three traits in mind, let’s look at a goblin picture from D&D Beyond:

(Owned by Wizards of the Coast. Source here)

Like, you can’t say D&D doesn’t call that a goblin, it’s literally on the goblin page.

This guy is yellow. He’s built like a four foot tall WWE Wrestler. He’s defending with his advancing arm as he rears up to smack ya!

(Okay, “Sneaky” is a hard one to argue.)

Moving on, what does Pathfinder call a Goblin:

(Owned by Paizo. Source here)

Look at this charming miscreant! Green. Big ole head. Good mix of of ugly and oddly adorable. Probably two feet tall, and happens to want your two feet, please, but you could step on him if you’d like.

He also looks like a Gremlin

(An adorable little chaos monster owned by Warner Brothers. Source)

Point is, Pathfinder’s more cartoony take on the classic monster feels more in the spirit of the thing. Every time I see one of those goofy faces, I feel like I’m in for an enjoyable time.

Bringing us back around to the point of this essay: the art direction of D&D bogs down my theater of the mind. The art in the rulebooks don’t inspire creativity or fantastic visions. It inspires… dull, lifeless people walking through dirt roads flanked by dead grass.

I don’t enjoy looking at D&D’s art. Relatedly, I don’t like looking at the art of Magic: the Gathering, whose style I can’t help by see in every D&D sourcebook cover I see. Neither game invokes an inviting world, but utilitarian ones that exist to give quick, forgettable visual flair to represent mechanical card effects.

To save making this long essay even longer and unfocused, I’ll save talk of actual ‘canon’ lore for another time.[10]

So why do I, a semi-professional funny man and sad dreamer who can’t actually draw, want to talk about rulebook art?

Well, I’ve always felt a disconnect when I play D&D. I make the characters, I roll the dice, I attempt to role-play, but I’ve always had an emotional gap between me and the character I’m playing. I like the concept, but when I use my theater of the mind, the character feels stiff and divorced from everything. Kind of like the 5th Edition rulebook.

Then I saw this:

(Source tweet. All of this artist’s work is great and I wish I could hire them.)

This half-elf showed up on my twitter timeline, and my first thought was ‘How come my characters don’t look like that?’

Soon followed by ‘Why couldn’t they?’

Then I completed the trilogy with ‘Why haven’t I imagined my characters in a style appealing to me?’

As I was deep into contemplating what sort of aesthetic I consider my “brand”,[11] it was entering a mind primed to start overanalyzing.

So, how do I imagine my characters? In the neighborhood of the D&D art, if I have  firm concept. Micah Krane always was mentally nebulous to me, just kinda being a generic half-elf dude. Trix (who was created for the brightly colored Pathfinder) is green-haired and wears a tail coat, but otherwise is also normal looking in my mind’s eye. In the last two D&D campaigns, Tybalt was also vague in appearance, and Teddi had Goat horns, but those were meant to stand out on a generic rogue character.[13]

But you know what I’ve never put on a character I’ve played? Glasses.

I hope that those who read my various media reviews[14] don’t need this overly explained, but I like glasses. I, myself, don’t wear glasses, but I find them to be great accessories in character design. Frames the eyes, come in a variety of shapes, adds bit of extra visual interest. I always point out Meganekkos and pay them extra attention.[15] I really, really like girls with glasses.

But I’ve never made one. Because there’s no cute design in D&D rulebooks. Just a range of handsome people to ugly halflings.[16]

That is the effect of art design in a system. It sets tone, expectations, and aesthetic for the players. It’s so ingrained that everytime I see art of players’ characters that break the standard, it always takes me aback. It’s inspiring to see artists who manage to divorce D&D the game from D&D the art.

I want to imagine fun, personally appealing characters. But the subtle direction of the insert art as I look through to rulebook, or the provided character portraits of D&D Beyond does not suggest things I like to see. It infects the mind, and leaves specific molds. People in practical, mundane clothes, walking down drab, uninteresting roads.

It’s the same lack of escapism that makes Western (Video Game) RPGs super unappealing to me.[17] Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, Bioshock don’t look like fun places to be, they look tiring and full of splintery furniture waiting to do 1d4 nonlethal damage.

So I have to talk about anime now.

My mother was staying at my home a little while ago, and I turned on My Roommate is a Cat. This prompted her ask me about what about anime was appealing. I couldn’t form a competent answer for the question at the time, but it’s had time to churn in my head.

Anime is a good middle ground between cartoon and realism. It can broach deeper topics and more mature storytelling than children’s cartoons,[18] without sacrificing a light visual tone and fantastic imagery. Also, the fact that it’s produced by a non-American, non-European culture lends a degree of separation with cultural expectations and tropes. Enhances Escapism.

Luckily, in (very) recent years, after generations of exchanging video games and animation back and forth, Japanese Tabletop RPGs are starting to join in on the fun.

Which means I can look at Ryuutama.

(Image copied from DriveThruRPG. Brought over the pacific by Kotodama Heavy Industries. Buy this book.)

I love this system.

Watercolor art direction. Layout evokes a spellbook. Two Characters and a Dog take the focus on the cover, while the road signs and tiny shrine in the background invoke the emphasis on travel and wonder.

The interior art?

(Taken off the Ryuutama (english) website. Buy this book.)

Well, that makes the game just look like fun. Cartoony characters fighting cat goblins. Conflict, but it doesn’t make life feel like a constant struggle. A world I wish to inhabit. There’s also more detailed images of dragons and other world-establishing pictures mixed in to give the art range, but it’s this sort of charming that makes Ryuutama the first rulebook I actually sat and read cover to cover.[19] It’s a good system I already reviewed. Buy this PDF, maybe they’ll reprint the physical book.

Anyways, I’ll admit, the art’s a little too simple for D&D. Perfect for Ryuutama, and the end of the scale I want my mental image to be, but overshoots the sweet spot. And it’s difficult enough to find players for the much more popular 5e, so Ryuutama exclusivity would grind my playtime to zero.

Still, Ryuutama does a great job of setting it’s light, fantastic tone, where D&D has failed me. The art direction of the books, and years of exposure and defaulting to what I assume D&D should look for establishes a mental habit that’s hard to break. Wizards of the Coast has drowned nerd spaces with its particular kind of art, especially with MtG plastered all over hobby stores, deck boxes, dice, playmats, and even D&D sourcebooks.

That’s not even accounting for fanworks and the speculative fiction art in online spaces.

So what do I want to look like? Were I blessed with talent or with patient to actually learn to draw well, what would I be referencing?

What about what set my expectations of fantasy years before IndigoDice invited me to that fateful Traveller game?

(Screen cap of Tales of Vesperia grabbed from here.)

Well, okay, what I’m actually thinking about is Tales of Symphonia, but Vesperia’s graphics are kinda what nostalgia tells me Symphonia tooked like, as opposed to what it actually looks like.[20]

Look at that verdant town! Warm lighting, bright characters, leaves growing to depict life. A hotel built into a tree. This is a fantasy world that is unashamed about life thriving.

Forget solarpunk. This is my aesthetic.

As for the party members…

(Okay, Judith’s a little gratuitous, but The Definitive Edition lets me put her in a suit, and she’s awesome. Art stolen from here.)

Oddly enough, as far as JRPG outfits go, these are pretty tame with details.[21] Mostly bright, popping colors, even Yuri’s dark clothes are done in such a way to not feel grim and edgy, hints of personality, and I just enjoy looking at them.

The Tales series as a whole does a good job of taking European fantasy and applying Japanese whimsy to the design. Also yukatas. Every member looks like the hero of their own story, while still being part of a cohesive whole.

Which is, you know, the ideal way to operate as a TRPG party.

So, what’s the take away?

Artists, keep being creative. Pull inspiration in from things besides the rulebooks and Critical Role. Look at the other things you love and bring visual flare and whimsy to your art. Then share it. Ignite the passions of those of us who can’t do the draw-good thing.

Players, play with the tropes. I love doing it narratively and mechanically. My favorite rogue is still my neutral good stage magician who would never do a crime. Explore what’s possible in the freeform world of tabletop games, both in play and your Theater of the Mind.

Game designers, branch out with the art. And stop using Powered by the Apocalypse as a crutch.[22]

Hope this long ramble was enjoyable and cohesive. If you want more of this, my other works, and maybe to allow me to make an actual play podcast, consider supporting me through Patreon or Ko-fi.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.

[1] Though I would love to read a transcript of the two discussing it. It'd be a fun debate. [2] I don't like Powered by the Apocalypse for precisely this reason. Every actual play I've heard with the system has players talking about their characters in the abstract, because they're just pressing the buttons on their character sheet.[3] [3] I maybe should do a breakdown of PbtA one day. [4] Which is pretty poor direction. Do an epic group shot of characters battling a horde around them. [5] None of the D&D core books has a dragon on the cover. Come on, that should’ve been a gimme! [6] Similar note as footnote 5. [7] Also CornflowerBlueDice is too long to be catchy. [8] I figured it out! [9] I haven’t looked at at Pathfinder’s forthcoming second edition. Fifth Edition reclaimed it’s throne as The ubiquitous system after fourth lost its footing, so I don’t think there’s much point. [10] TL;DR: I ignore it. [11] Pulp Fantasy is too mundane. Steampunk is too victorian-y. Sci-fi fractals into so much. Solarpunk has appeal, but isn’t quite right.[12] [12] Haven’t really found the term. [13] Let’s not examine that I put more thought into female character design than male for the moment. [14] Which you should. Validate my efforts! [15] And desperately pray it’s considered innocent enough of a fetish that I don’t have to stop. [16] Never liked halflings. Gnomes are fine. Halflings, in art, have always been off-putting and malformed. [17] That and the emphasis of character customization kneecapping the Player Character’s narrative involvement. Can’t give them a personality if that’s the end user’s job! [18] Even Avatar: The Last Airbender felt like it had to sneak the narrative depth it achieved past corporate. [19] I do need to give it a reread, though. Relearn the system. [20] It still looks good, especially the environment, but the characters are kind of… leaning towards chibi. [21] This, specifically, is why I chose to highlight Vesperia over Rune Factory. [22] Technically nothing to do with this essay, but I can’t stress this point enough.

#SepiaDiceRants #ryuutama #Fifth Edition #Dungeons and Dragons #pathfinder #tales of vesperia

[rosegolddm]

Intro from your lovely DM! My history with D&D:

Hi friends! I have decided to start a blog documenting my experiences as a DM running Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. I actually haven't been a tabletop gamer for very long, but D&D has been something of which I have been aware for a long time.

I think I've always been into the fantasy genre, going back to a love of fairy tales and mythology from a very early age. I liked being read to and learning to read came just as naturally to me as a result. My dad also had an ongoing series of stories about Prince Garbanzo and Princess Goldie-lips that he'd improv for my siblings and me as bedtime stories. As a young gay child, princesses and mermaids in particular always caught my interest. I remember attending renaissance faires and coming home with wooden swords and shields - no princess hats, but that would have been THE LOOK at 5 years old for sure.

My history with role playing started with console JRPGs. These of course owe a lot to D&D when it comes to monsters, settings and other genre conventions we assume have just always been there. The original Legend of Zelda is the first RPG I can remember watching someone else play. Final Fantasy IV was the first I played on my own, back when it was called Final Fantasy II and fans in the US weren't even aware there were two games in between that (at the time) were destined to languish in Japan. Several more games would follow, many still retaining those D&D roots of which I was at the time unaware.

Shortly thereafter, my sister had a high school boyfriend who gave me several books in the Dragonlance series. This was my first true exposure to Dungeons and Dragons. I tore through these novels under the age of 10 - some of the content admittedly went over my head (probably for the best), but I read them cover to cover. I also remember reading The Hobbit around this time - I even did a book report about it!

I don't think I necessarily made the connection that the Dragonlance novels were based on an actual game until around the time Eye of the Beholder was ported from PC to current consoles of the time. I distinctly remember renting the SNES version and would later go on to own the Sega CD port. Video game magazines gave me some familiarity with the rules and monsters, but overall they were more cool games to play, nothing I wanted to research further than that. At some point I also rented the NES Dragonlance game, but that one's also notoriously crappy. Perhaps the less said about it, the better.

The Capcom D&D arcade games, probably the furthest from playing traditional D&D, were what really piqued my interest in the tabletop game from which all these video game spinoffs derived. Among other things, they included a mechanic that sort of emulated rolling dice to make a saving throw - you had to move the joystick back and forth to get out of various status effects. For whatever reason, this stuck with me. The inclusion of several iconic monsters and spells probably didn't hurt. I was sold on all of it!

After having played a few video games using D&D rules (or at least the settings), I finally decided it was time to give playing the real thing a try. My mom wasn't about to take me to some hobby store to play with a bunch of old grognards - nor did I even know that was an option at the time! Instead, I was allowed to order my first D&D module - Menzoberranzan. I don't think I had any sort of description of what I was ordering other than it being a D&D product - I was going in practically blind. Without any other manuals and just what we knew from the various games we'd played, my brother and I guessed our way through, mostly just throwing random dice around and deciding arbitrarily whether or not we'd killed one of the many drow provided in the modules. Despite a ton of interesting setting information, we both lost interest pretty quickly. Menzoberranzan was either given away during a move to a new house or lost in a flood. We resumed playing the occasional D&D video game, eventually having our options widened through both emulation and PC gaming.

As I got older, I made more friends with similar interests. Some of them had played actual D&D (2E) campaigns - I was so jealous! I managed to rope one friend into acting as DM for me and another friend. We made it through about one session during a lunchtime period at school. I don't recall doing much in the way of rolling dice or anything one typically associates with playing a tabletop RPG. It's probably for the best that it didn't pan out. The DM loved pulling dick moves on PCs and had an arsenal of DMPCs to get out of any and every jam, all of whom were ostensibly cooler and more competent than either of us players could possibly muster. I don't think dealing with any of that at length would have left me with a very good impression of the game.

The release of the third edition of D&D was an exciting time! I ended up picking up the player's manual, DM guide, and monster manual. Later on I even got the Complete Psionics. I would use these to formulate several characters and come up with all sorts of cool ideas in my head, but none of it ever translated into a regular game. At the time I certainly didn't feel confident enough to act as a DM, especially with a system as rule-heavy and numbers-heavy as 3E tended to be. There was also a brief attempt to get a game of Vampire: The Masquerade going in high school, but again it never really got off the ground.

Tabletop gaming fell off the radar for me for many years following that. I was aware of the 4th edition release, but unsure of what to make of it and not really willing to spend my money on a whole new set of manuals. It was a drastic change, to be sure, and I was probably more focused on dudes or partying or clothing. Every now and then, I'd get curious about a particular setting's lore and read up on that, but it wouldn't ever get further than that. I even went so far as to download a Pathfinder app that contained a huge amount of compiled information - being close in spirit to 3E didn't hurt!

It wouldn't be until a friend from Tumblr started doing artwork for the campaign he was running that my interest was again sparked in actually playing a sit-down game of D&D. I knew bits and pieces about the newest edition and it all sounded good to me. The party needed an arcane caster, I chose a Warlock, and I was immediately hooked. What really sealed the deal was having both an accommodating, engaging DM in addition to a great group of players. Over the course of about a year, we played through Lost Mine of Phandelver, adding lots of our own personal touches to the material through our characters.

What followed were some attempts at new 5E games, unfortunately hampered by the scheduling conflicts that often arise when you're trying to get 5-6 20-40somethings with jobs living in different boroughs of NYC to appear at the same place at the same time. Some folks moved away, some got bogged down in personal life stuff, but I never lost interest. If anything it made me more determined to get the right crew together for a really great campaign.

I am currently part of a mostly homebrew 5e campaign on hiatus best described as a mix of both Avatar series, Steven Universe, and a lot of interesting parallels to the currently running Not Another D&D Podcast (which I highly recommend btw). Kevin has been a great DM and we often spitball ideas that eventually make it into the campaign off each other.

During downtime from my main 5e game (we typically play about once a month and are currently taking a longer break), I started looking into Adventurer's League games for Kevin and I to try to give us both more opportunities to try different characters (and in Kevin's case, not being stuck as DM!). That didn't quite pan out, but in my search I DID randomly find a tabletop gaming channel on Slack at my job. I found a few mentions of D&D and decided to throw my hat in the ring with helping to organize a game. This was interpreted as me volunteering to be DM.

Honestly, I'd never considered it before and was a bit intimidated by the prospect. After stewing over it for a bit, however, I realized I could run Lost Mine of Phandelver, having familiarity with the material as a player. Once I had the books in my hands and the planning started, it all sort of clicked. Using tips from my friends who'd run games before and a variety of resources available online, I've gotten really into the whole process!

So that leads us to where we are now. In about a week, I'll be meeting with my players (2 experienced, 3 totally new to D&D) for session 0 to go over rules, expectations, and character creation. Coming up with characters is one of my favorite parts, so I'm very excited! I'll be using this space to discuss my own experiences running games, resources I enjoy, and other aspects of tabletop gaming. There's plenty more to come!

#d&d 5e #d&d #dungeons and dragons #tabletop gaming #tabletop rpg #dungeon master #game master #lost mine of phandelver #d&d for beginners #rosegolddm

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasListens: The Adventure Zone

The Adventure Zone was a tough sell to me, despite (and possibly because of) seeing it pop up as various artists I respect began getting into the podcast.

First off, despite my love of the hobby, I have a rather low tolerance for second hand accounts. Short stories focusing on a singular, amusing event is great. Multi-part text narratives are a no go. Likewise, I’ve always had difficulty getting into actual play podcasts, since most that I encounter don’t really put a lot of weight on actual entertainment over, you know, just putting a recorder in the middle of the table during the usual game night. So I listen to very few Actual Plays.

And by ‘few Actual Plays’, I mean One Shot (Which does a good job of rotating content and keeping the separate narratives relatively short and self-contained) and Campaign (Which started with good production quality, and already had my loyalty due to being a One Shot spinoff show.) I don’t even listen to rest of their network.

I’d made a couple attempts at Critical Role, but since it’s a continuation of the cast’s ongoing campaign (thus continuity lockout) and was confined to YouTube for years (thus I couldn’t really listen while driving, running errands, or doing chores), I just couldn’t force myself to be invested. And it’s cast is a bunch of Voice Actors! I love voice actors!

Basically, a bunch of the usual complaints I have about media accessibility.

Further, as Adventure Zone’s popularity began exploding, I admit there was a degree of resentment on my part. I’ve longed harbored a desire to have my own Actual Play show, and if the genre’s exploding now, while I’ve still got no concrete plans, chances are, once I do have my act together,[1] I’ll again be starting during the twilight period of the genre.[2]

Dang it, McElroys! Don’t you burn the fuel before I even board!

Still, it was becoming a talking point, and was a downloadable podcast, so it wouldn’t hurt to try. Probably drop it after an episode or two.

The first couple of episodes were not promising. Players were mostly newbies, with a lot of rules talk; they were running the adventure that comes prepackaged in the Starter Set, which means I had to sit through the session that I’ve literally either tried to run or play several times. And it never gets past the freaking bugbear.

So, of course, after completing that specific portion, the McElroys promptly leave the rails, lightly skip past Phandalin, so I didn’t even get to finally see what’s supposed to happen after the lengthy mechanic and battle tutorial!

However, that’s also the point Griffin began making the story his own, so I might as well keep listening as I eat my slice of pre-work CostCo Pizza.

That’s what the series mostly was. Background noise as I prepared for work. The first couple arcs were okay. Not amazing, but okay. The performers were good comedically, and they seemed to be having fun, so it was alright.

I was intrigued by the premise of the second arc. Train-based mystery, huh? Sure. I’m always game for playing with tropes. Griffin, and the players, were beginning to explore character voices, and the NPCs were getting livelier. I admit, I was a quick sell on Angus. The precocious boy detective being placed in the middle of a train mystery, perpetrated by a serial killer, with a rather maimed body is just the right balance of darkly inappropriate.

Especially since Angus was there to solve the mystery in case the Boys were too incompetent.

Still, wasn’t too absorbed. I began swapping between TAZ Arcs and One Shot series. If I got too bored, I’d just drop TAZ, since podcasts are one of the few mediums I’m able to do so, since I can only will myself to consume them in limited circumstances (basically, while in transit, or some other activity that is physically busy but mentally void).[3]

Combat, however, remained a time for Canvas’s eyes to glaze over, and nothing of value to remain.

The Lunar Interludes were fun! Building comradery with a small community is what I’m about. Especially with their bunkmate, Pringles! Even though Griffin clearly didn’t want anything more to do with Pringles.

Poor Pringles.

Petals to the Metal is marked by many as the real turning point. I… liked it a little less than Rockport Limited? It started strong while the Boys were infiltrating a bank, and Taako has a semi-hypocritical moment I recognized from my favorite Pathfinder character, where this kleptomaniac wizard objected to Merle and Magnus taking time to rob the bank while supposedly saving it.[5]

However, this was followed by a sequence explaining the Mad Max race and infiltration to steal parts which… was actually kind of dull. The dialogue with the guards was great, but then it was long stretch of explaining a compound we’d never see again, and a large fight. Then there was a charming sequence where The Boys selected their animal motifs, with Taako getting an actually pretty nice (if meta) serious moment regarding his Mongoose mask.

Then the race itself was… a giant combat. Interesting enemy concepts. Still a giant combat.

The ending of the race, while exciting, didn’t carry much weight because I’d lost the thread due to not paying attention.

Then there was the final boss fight.

Petals to the Metal had a lot of combat, okay? I don’t enjoy combat!

However, music was beginning to be introduced, and it was pretty good. I was beginning to feel it.

Then the Crystal Kingdom knocked it up just enough notches for me to go ‘Huh. The finale’s coming soon? Better catch up.’ and gently set One Shot aside,[6] lean my head forward, and marathon with purpose!

The sound design continued to improve, to the point of being used to foreshadow the events of the arc. The events also helped highlight how the show creators were paying attention to and heeding the words of their audience. In a positive aspect, Griffin began reading out the lyrics of the song. And, in a bit of hilarious and spiteful worldbuilding, explains the origins of what were (apparently) the much discussed elevators.[7]

In retrospect, a lot of plot stuff happened in the lab. Weird.

It was a good arc for callbacks and call forwards.

Eleventh Hour, however, is my favorite arc. For some reason, I’m just a sucker for Groundhog Day loops.[9] Compounding this, Eleventh Hour was set in a small community of new characters, there was a mystery element, plenty of space for shenanigans, puzzles, ominous prophecy, and a well done tragic villain. Also, backstory for the three leads.

Oh boy, the backstory for the three leads.

I was a Taako fan until this arc. He clearly was the best character. However, as it turns out, Travis really did devise a solid backstory. A few quick early life scenes, then we’re shown he found happiness, won a happy ending already, and had it stolen.

Then Magnus showed his true strength of character, and I was sold. Magnus was my new boy. He’s great.

Anyways, episodes with ‘Finale’ in the title were showing up in the feed, and I wanted to stop spoiling myself, so I really had to buckle down.

Luckily, work kept putting me in the garden center as the season was in its death throes, so I had plenty of time to sit in a small hut with my phone and a pair of headphones. I’d begun actively looking for opportunities to listen to more, take longer errand runs to have an excuse to get through Eleventh Hour and more episodes.

It was a good time.

The Suffering Games however, was less good. Not because it was designed to be a miserable experience, which I naturally love. The sequence of events had a lot good character work, especially for Magnus. The Wheel of Sacrifice is an amazing concept once your players are high enough level, and Griffin does a good job narrating and describing what each sacrifice does.

Especially the loss of memories. Each one stung. And Griffin did a great job of making a few of the choices hurt in surprising ways; in particular, Merl giving up his unused Axe proficiency. What was originally a cop out, Griffin expertly weaved into a solid loss. Then Magnus was given a surprisingly insidious choice: losing the memory of who he had sworn revenge on.

Also a mercy, considering losing Julia might’ve been worse. However, narratively, that would’ve removed Magnus’s main drive and significant portion of his character. Remember, GMs, carefully consider how the threads are weaved before cutting them!

Plus, we also got a good demonstration of how close The Boys were when Taako and Merle agreed to take over the vengeance quest without further details. It’s important to Magnus, and now someone else needs to do it.[10]

Taako got off really light, as the only narrative sacrifice was his beauty, which Taako quickly rendered moot via magic.[11] Because we learned a lot about the other two, I wish Taako could’ve loss more.

However, the non-wheel of sacrifice parts were… well, they fell flat, and since there wasn’t space for any significant character interaction with someone outside of the party (even Cam got put into Magnus’s pocket), it was just gimmicky encounter after gimmicky encounter. It turned repetitive.[12] Prisoner Dilemma's don’t work if those on the other side aren’t emotionally significant.

Sure, looking back and examining it, a lot of interesting things happened. But sitting in the garden center, waiting for customers, it felt tedious. Not sad and emotionally devastating, just… eh.

Were I to replicate it, I’d probably combine the prisoner's dilemma and Wheel of Sacrifice, and make the players compete against one another. If you both spare the other, then you’re both given a choice between two sacrifices. If you’re forsaken by someone you spared, then you take both. And if you both forsake… I guess the GM just gets to decide which one you take?

If you want to up the ante in later rounds, offer to return something lost in later rounds if you forsake your partner. And if you want to twist the knife, have those spared choose the sacrifice for those they betrayed.[13]

Sorry, slipping into SepiaDice for a moment. Back to the review.

Reunion Tour was a good trip into the apocalypse, and final check in with a lot of the minor characters as everyone bugged out. Bad things are coming, and Madame Lucretia Director has a lot of secrets to be found.

Stolen century was... I don't know how I feel about it? There was a lot of backstory that needed to be conveyed suddenly, yes, but after the arc was concluded, I didn't feel like I'd learn much new about anything substantial. Nothing new about the world, since the places visited came and went so fast, that few left an impression.[14]

There were four characters for us and the players to get to know, but... Well, that didn't pan out too well. Of course, focus had to remain on the players, but ended up giving little room for Davenport, Barry, and Lucretia to develop. So, while it was an arc of vignettes, which is usually my jam, in this case, the vignettes were too small and delayed the plot so long, that I was just waiting for them to get on with it.

(Though, it probably didn't help that I was ill during the latter half of Stolen Century and the first two parts of the finale, making it kind of a blur.)

How to possibly improve it? Well, let's put the SepiaDice hat back on, I guess.[15]

First off, I wouldn't have changed systems, and not just because I hear about Powered by the Apocalypse so often I've become burnt out without ever playing it. Staying with 5e would've maintained a level of consistency with the rest of the series, and let the players use their experience to act the part of the well traveled people they are in the arc.[16]

Second, instead of a bunch of ten minute scenes for a handful of worlds, spend an episode on a world and do a one shot. Show them preparing to leave their homeworld, then the first world. Then do sessions covering the rest of the details that need to be conveyed.

Finally, integrate the other four crewmembers into these adventures. There's two viable methods: rotate through them as a sort of 'Guest NPC' (or Guest PC if they want to bring on temporary cast members). Or, let the players run two characters (Give Lup to Justin, Davenport to Clint, and probably Barry over to Travis) while Young Lucretia can be mission control until it's time to toughen her up.

So... that's Stolen Century, I guess? I'm having a hard time remembering specifics.

Story and Song was a good finale.

I don't get to play many endings. In fact, I’ve played only the one, and... it wasn't a good campaign to begin with, so it is what it was.

The Adventure Zone, meanwhile, did what every good narrative should do: give a cameo to everyone they practically can, tying up any fraying that may have occurred. That way, the audience gets a chance to see their favorite character at least one more time.

Then, for the players, they were split up, and given an epic scene that contributed to the final conclusion, and closed their character arcs (even if that closure involves an old running gag.)[17]

Afterwards, into the breech for a fancy final battle.

Finally, the epilogue. I don't want to spoil it, but I do wish to speak on the framework. Griffin handled the epilogue perfectly. First, he asked the players to describe where the characters are a year later, then pitched what he (Griffin) would like to have happened while making it clear the player got final say, before both were happy with where we leave Taako, Merle, and Magnus.

That's how you finish a game.

Suffice it to say, I may have started with a lot of reservations, but I learned a lot, and hope to apply it to my own games and projects.

If you enjoyed this... whatever I just wrote... maybe poke around my blog. I have other reviews and essays. Maybe I wrote something else you like. If you'd like to support me and my creative endeavors, I have a patreon! I like money.

Thanks for reading.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Heh, wordplay. [2] Though, to be fair, I kinda knew Sprite Comics were ignoble going into Nintendo Acres. Still, it had its charm. [3] This is foreshadowing to the fact that I ended up making a conscious effort to listen to the show while hanging out at home.[4] [4] I was also sick with a stomach bug at the time, though. [5] In my case, Trix was happy to loot a corpse the party found on the side of the road, but not the crypt they were dungeon delving. In my defense, the road corpse had his things by accident, while the items in the crypt were deliberately interred. It’s a respectability thing. [6] I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. [7] As someone who had a player try and call out a clock as anachronistic, I can understand how that could be irritating.[8] I solved it by just saying ‘this isn’t Earth, and there’s a wall clock.’ But different strokes, I suppose. [8] There was also an ongoing debate about whether sandwiches existed. I was in the ‘Sandwich like things likely existed before the Earl of Sandwich’ camp, but I never got around to dredging up the Good Eats segment. [9] Fair warning: if I figure out how to replicate Endless Eight on my actual play show, I’m doing it. Same session, on repeat. And you’ll have to sit through it. [10] This better come up during a live show! [11] It’s always annoying when a player does that. [12] You may ask, ‘Canvas, you hated the repetitive feeling, yet you want to emulate Endless Eight?’ Well, you see, I also deeply love meta jokes on the audience. And I’m just a little Chaotic-Aligned. [13] Obviously, you’ll need a mature game group to do this, and an emotionally satisfying conclusion. [14] One was the world of TAZ Nights, but since I find participating in the Max Fun Drive off-putting for unknowable reasons, I had no context to care. [15] Which is probably a giant paper mache D12 mask. [16] But mostly I'm just sick of Fate and ApocalypseWorld. [17] Especially if it delivers on that running gag's punchline.

#CanvasReviews #the adventure zone #taz #D&D #podcasts #SepiaDice

[ahnmakes]

devlog # 6 // hex tilemaps and pathfinding, part 5 (refining pathfinding features)

so, if you can’t tell, i’m absolutely in love with development right now, been typing away for days and days. :’)

mainly, since the last devlog, i’ve spent my time doing two things:

- organising and backing up my development process

- refining the pathfinding system’s features

starting with that first point, once my project files and code started getting to be more than a few lines, i quickly realised that i would need to take some time to start keeping everything even more in order.

i came across trello, a tool where you can make and sort tasks to keep track of what’s going on in your project.  currently, this is all entered manually, but i did notice they have a thousand features and other apps and things to take your task-keeping further.  right now, i am satisfied and very much served by these simple lists.  instead of countless, nondescript notes and word documents on my computer - “rpg notes”, “rpg devlog”, “devlog notes”, “game design”, “game design b”, “design notes”, etc - i keep all of my to-dos in one place.

i also started using github (for unity) to keep changelogs and backups of all of my project files.  this is something i had been especially thinking of as the files grew larger and larger, given that if i lost my progress, even though i could definitely put things back together (and perhaps more neatly the second time?), it would definitely throw off my motivation.

it only took a few minutes to set up a github repository(?) and install the associated plugin for unity, though i do not feel at all that i understand how this all really works - for now, the point is that i’ve got a consistent, easy way of tracking changes in my files and making sure i don’t lose them.

okay, now for what we’re really here for: the game, and its pathfinding system(s).  what i’m not going to do in this devlog is explain every detail of how i’ve put things together; what i will do is explain (a) what i put together, (b) the patterns and resources i worked from, and (c) some of the challenges that came up throughout.  there’s going to be lots of pictures today!

last time, we got to pathfinding in the sense that the game was able to identify the quickest route from our source position to a target tile position, then draw debug lines along that route.  in the few days since then, i’ve complicated the system quite a lot.

firstly, i made changes so that the tiles actually have movement costs.  i did this by creating a method that would take in the coordinates of a tile, then return its cost.

next, we needed to actually put this cost into the algorithm, so instead of the dist, i put in the CostToEnterTile - this piece of pathfinding might look familiar!  (i actually ended up putting the distance back into the equation as well, not shown in this image.)

after manually defining the movement cost values for each tileType in the inspector, the game looked like this:

notice how the pathfinding is avoiding grey tiles, and somewhat the blue ones?  this is not the “shortest” path, but it is the one that costs the player the least movement (which is what we want)!

next, i put in a method i imagined would be helpful - something called upon Start that would take a unit’s position, figure out if there was a hex below (via raycast), and then take on that hex’s position and array coordinates.  for a reason i cannot explain, this works only on this exact player object - not even on copies - and it works about 85% of the time.  :’)  i don’t understand why at all, and i’ve pored over this code (and updated it) for hours.  if you see why this code isn’t working how i intend, please let me know!

this is what it looks like when it does work (player was originally just vaguely, randomly over a tile and is now centered on that tile, internally storing a reference to its coordinates):

and whoa!  the tiles are at different heights?

well, yes, because i created something for each tileType called the “height offset range”.  this data is used when first instantiating all the hexes.  brings a ton more depth into the level.  lesgoooo unity 3d!

with this, the tiles start to look more like environmental terrain.  it becomes more apparent that the pathfinding is very much avoiding certain tiles.

this is just one of many changes i want to implement that will allow the game to generate interesting levels, procedurally, with almost no effort.

check out this “randomly” generated level, which has a more island-y feel, with the increased water tiles.

this was created by altering only 3 or so values, representing the proportions of a given tileType’s likelihood to be the one chosen when a hex is instantiated. (i want to soon move all of these variables into something editable from the inspector, so everything can be easily adjusted from inside unity, not from digging in the code.)

if i alter these few values again (notice below that i only change the 10, 9, and 6), we start generating levels that have quite a different feeling to them, something more rocky.

i even created another tileType (called “null”) which cannot be targeted or walked on.  this creates an effect that looks like there are spaces cut out of the map.

it may seem like “well, of course, the pathfinding won’t go along these tiles if they don’t exist”, but they actually do exist; the pathfinding is recognising them and choosing against them.  here is the same image as above, but with the null hexes changed to a visible/glassy material.

then, it felt like time to jump more into the code again and figure out how to not just calculate paths, but to actually use them to move the character.  again, with insights from quill’s tutorial, i set up some code that would move the unit along the found path, guiding them to a specific “destination”, waiting for them to get close, then moving to the next piece as the next destination.  cool shit that i definitely didn’t figure out alone.

after putting in some debugs (thanks to my virgo), we get a very satisfying list of steps the pathfinding went through to move the player, and our first visual..

! ! !

there remains only one thing to be done, from the two goals i defined for the pathfinding system.  one was to be able to find a path and move a character there (which we just did), and the other was .. to highlight possible move spaces?  how the fu--

welp, long story short, i panicked a bit because the few guides/tutorials i was finding were v e r y math and big, conceptual engineering (at least that’s how they felt).  and when i found what felt like a more accessible tutorial that showed someone using pathfinding for this purpose (highlighting possible movement tiles), their implementation didn’t seem immediately like something i could integrate alongside what i had.  i watched a bit, got frustrated and overwhelmed, then decided to relax, ease my mind .. which led me to this video lol?  an mit talk about graph theory and breadth first search.

somehow, i found it comforting to just explore the concept without thinking of how to apply it immediately.  i was just seeking to understand.  and understand i did.  right before i went to bed, i decided to write out - from this understanding - what kind of lists, variables, states, methods i would need to get this working.  i set it aside, and went to sleep.  and when i woke up the next day, this morning, this is what i did.

i translated what i had understood directly into new lists, variables, and the like - things i understood.  and for the first time on this scale, i was doing this entirely freehand, without any tutorial.  and i wrote for the code to do this when the the player was clicked on:

not so impressive?  what about this?

that looks like what i asked for!

the only difference between the two is that, in the second implementation of this algorithm, rather than cycling through all of the hexes, i ask the search to stop at a certain point -- something i’m currently calling the movement buffer.

from the game’s movement rules, a player can not only attempt to move within a character’s movement range, but can also exert the player to try to push to a further tile; this has the consequence of the character hurting or overly fatiguing themself, if they do not make a high enough roll to move that amount.  that’s what this image shows: the light blue represents the player’s movement, and the darker blue represents those exert/can-try-but-it’s-risky tiles.

i also took care of some other helpful, necessary features (can only select within the highlighted tiles, deselecting the unit will return tiles to their original colors, etc), also free-hand, just by applying the little pieces i know into a greater whole.

i have never felt more confident in my own programming ability; i define goals for my work, i research, i think through them, and then am able to create and refine the code that follows.  with that massive update, i will temporarily be pausing on any pathfinding for a while (as both of the goals we defined have been completed!), and looking to other areas to explore.

thank you for joining me on this journey so far. <3 in the next days, i’ll mostly be looking into visuals - shader maths, animation, modeling - trying to get things looking pretty.  most likely will be implementing a character stats UI, as well.  see you in the next devlog (or find and chat with me on twitter.com/michaelinwords​)!

with love and an ever-growing to-do list,

ahn

#dev #gamedev #indie games #indie developer #indie development #game development #art #shaders #math #animation #modeling #ui #character #rpg #turn-based rpg #final fantasy tactics #hex tiles #hex-based #grid #magic #fantasy #graph theory #pathfinding #engineering #mathematics #computer science #unity #unity3d

[mynameisananagram]

Ryder character questions

This post was made by @jedimasteramell but because no one asks me owt, I’m gonna answer all of them.

Also thanks @alicesaurus for reblogging this onto my dash!

Just some fun character development/get-to-know-them questions! Warning, there are some basic spoilers.

The basics! Whats their full name, gender, and sexuality? Describe their general appearance and/or include a picture. Is there anything you canon beyond what the game allows?

This is Greta Ryder. She’s a pansexual woman with a tattoo on the left side of her face and neck, and scars on her right cheek. Her make up is amazing.

Can’t always wear Initiative whites and blues, Whats their dress style like? Do they prefer casual wear, or being in armor? Is it the same as it was in the Milky Way? How, if applicable, has it changed since arriving in Helius?

She prefers the armour options in Andromeda; integrating angaran or Remnant tech is extremely helpful; generally though, she prefers to chill out in her badass jacket. All her outfits are functional and stylish, in her favourite colours.

Do they have piercings, tattoos, or notable scars? Do they dye their hair, or is it a gene mod?

The scars on her cheek are a remnant from a previous misunderstanding with a group of vorcha at a Prothean dig site. The misunderstanding was resolved amicably, but there were scars on both sides.

As for hair, it’s a gene mod, done more for convenience than anything else; having to dye one’s hair in between missions was incredibly tiresome.

What’s their personality like? How do they feel about being Pathfinder? How do they change, if at all, over the course of the story?

At first, she was incredibly unsure of herself. Spending most of her pre-Heleus career on fairly tame dig sites, the only trouble she’d face was from pirates and scavengers. Outside of her comfort zone she’s constantly second guessing herself. Thanks to SAM and the rest of her team, not to mention her successes, she’s becoming more and more the Pathfinder her father knew she’d be.

What’s their preferred profile, or class? Were they naturally inclined towards combat or technical skills? Were they a developed biotic, or did they first experience it with SAM?

Greta was always into technology, always the first to adapt to new tech in both combat and her scientific role. As such, she tends to prefer tech skills in Helus, with the combo of Overload and Incinerate being very useful. That said, the biotic Annihilation Field is awesome for close range combos.

Canon says they served in the Alliance before joining the Initiative, do you keep this canon, or have you made some changes? Explain their backstory either way.  

I’m a fan of the canon, truth be told. Greta has always been a sarcastic, highly capable nerd. She joined the Alliance, following in her father’s footsteps, but despite showing an aptitude as a combat technician, she found the idea of uncovering the mysteries of Prothean civilisation far too big a draw, and joined the scientific corps as a researcher and peacekeeper.

Everyone’s got one… List their (or your) favorite powers, weapons, and armor sets. Any special reason for these choices?

Throughout my Mass Effect history I’ve always loved the tech stuff. Overload and Incinerate are fantastic together, and good for basically every kind of enemy. As for weapons, the Disciple from ME3 is ace in Andromeda; I crafted I my own with armour-busting seeking projectiles and named it Deathlord. Couple that with cryo ammo and a crafted krogan hammer called Smash Bastard and the results are explosive.

As for armour, the health benefits of the Remnant armour is super handy, though the Maverick armour is a lot more stylish.

Its all in the family. Explain their relationship with Alec, Ellen, and their sibling. If you changed anyone’s names or added a different sibling in your canon, explain why.

As a rule, I don’t change canon. Greta’s relationship with her father is strained; there’s a lot of respect there but it’s not a traditional daughter’s love for her family. She is, however, extremely close to her twin, Scott. She wishes she could have spent more time with her mother.

What’s their favorite memory they have of their sibling? Of their parents?

The two weren’t close as children; the fact that they were twins was more of an embarrassment than anything else. Both wanted to be their own person and be as individual as possible. They only really became close in their late teens as they enlisted in the Alliance and realising just how similar they were to each other 

How have they dealt with the aftermath of Habitat 7? How deeply does this affect them?

It’s hard to put into words. While never close to her father, Alec was still Greta’s dad, and he was a huge figure in his life. Losing him in such a heroic manner was hard to come to terms with, and the only person she could talk to about it was in a coma. Breaking the news to Scott while he was comatose was especially hard. Couple that with all the pressure put on her by the Nexus leadership, not to mention the insulting interactions with Foster Addison, has left a psychological toll.

Thankfully, her family on the Tempest has helped her adapt to this. Liam is always good for downtime, Jaal is always happy to talk about feelings, and Vetra is good for forgetting about problems and shooting the breeze. Lexi’s medical and psychiatric advice has been invaluable.

As they unlock the memories, how does this change, if at all, their view of their parents?

There was definitely a lot more to her parents than meets the eye; as mindblowing as these revelations are, especially these Reaper things and the apparent destruction of the entire Milky Way, part of Greta can’t help but feel hurt that Alec never trusted either of his children enough to impart this knowledge while he was alive.

Explain the way they feel about their squadmates, both initially and over the course of the story.

Initially, Greta finds Cora standoffish and cold. Over the course of the story, she finds her creepy love for the asari to be kinda disconcerting, and would rather keep her distance.

Liam’s a laugh. Initially he’s a bit annoying and cocky, but there’s real depth to him, and he’s a real friend, if a little immature.

Vetra is a solid friend, and helping her and Sid become closer really solidified the friendship Greta shares with her.

Jaal is a sweetie. He’s always been a sweetie, and most likely will always be a sweetie.

Drack is the best space grandpa ever. If Greta ever realised that she needed a parental figure, she’d probably realise that Drack fits the bill perfectly.

Peebee is definitely affected by her abusive relationship with Kulinda, but regardless, she’s an insufferable, immature, edgelord of an arsehole, and Greta is happy to have as little to do with her as possible.

Explain the way they feel about the rest of the Tempest crew?

Gil is a cocky, arrogant twat who needs to take a good hard look at himself.

Kallo is the loveliest being in the entire universe, and if anyone hurts him in Greta’s presence, they’d better be good at running away fast.

Suvi is the most beautiful woman in the world to Greta. They don’t agree on matters of religion, but their shared love of the beauty of the cosmos and science in general (not to mention that accent) keeps the fire burning.

How about Nexus leadership and the people on the Nexus in general?

Kesh is awesome. Kandros is a solid guy. Tann is a snivelling bureaucrat. Addison and her goddamn poetry can fuck right off.

What were their reactions to the Angara and the Exiles? How did learning there was a whole new species in Helius affect them? How did news of the rebellion affect them?

“Huh, a brand new galaxy and yet life has evolved beings with the same limbs and facial arrangements as the Milky Way, that’s extremely unlikely but OK whatever” (I have something of a bugbear about the fact that aliens all looking the same but with different heads is just ridiculously implausible, and don’t even get me started on the female angara looking ridiculously oversexualised... also, while we’re on the subject, why are humans the only species in the known universe to evolve hair? The fuck’s that about?

Ahem. Anyway. The existence of a pre-existing species in Andromeda does change perspectives; the Nexus species came here for a home, but the Habitats chosen were already habitats to other species. To just set up outposts willy nilly would be dangerously close to the colonisation of the Americas by the Europeans, which began with genocide and devolved from there. Every decision the Nexus makes in Heleus has to be at the discretion of the angara.

To paraphrase Greta at the beginning of the game, what would we do if the angara turned up on Earth expecting to live there?

What about their interactions with the Kett?

Knowing their true origin is hard; it’s not like there’s a lot of choice in the matter but the idea of eradicating an entire species, however hostile, is a chilling prospect.

Did Ryder fall in love? If so, with whom? What drew them to that person? Would their sibling approve?

She is deeply in love with Suvi (though she won’t deny an attraction to Jaal, Keri T’Vessa or Reyes Vidal), for reasons explained above. Scott would approve, probably; he’d also most likely have been drawn to Mr. Vidal.

What does Ryder do in their spare time? What are their hobbies and interests? Do they share these with their friends, or are they more private?

Greta’s big into reading. She likes to read mind-numbingly complex scientific journals, but her favourite are asari pulp romance novels which she enjoys reading for comedy value.

How do they feel being in command of the Tempest? Whats their favorite part of the ship? Least favorite?

Greta still finds it uncomfortable being in charge, but she’s getting there. She loves hanging out in her quarters (being bigger than a lot of Nexus apartments after all, but her favourite place is the bridge, next to her beau and the stars.

How about driving the Nomad? Are they a good or terrible driver?

No comment. Don’t ask Jaal.

How do they feel about their connection with SAM? What’s their views on AI in general? Knowing Milky Way history and the attack on Eden Prime and the Citadel a recent memory, did the Geth influence this view? Does their view on SAM change?

Greta is pro-AI, and while understanding the quarians’ actions during their war with the geth, she finds it upsetting that most quarians are still anti-AI. The geth attacks on Eden Prime and the Citadel were terrifying, but Greta knows that AI are objective and rational in their behaviours, and attacking colonies and the Citadel is not standard geth behaviour; she would have liked to have been assigned to the task force investigating the geth attacks had she not had her Alliance career sidelined by her father’s own research.

As for SAM, she is a huge fan. No matter what happens, she’ll never be alone, not to mention the fact that she’s basically a superhero now, able to adapt her body and mind at will.

Favorite world they landed on? How do they feel getting to be the first human to step in many of these places?

Clear out all the predators from Havarl and Greta could live there forever; it’s so beautiful and twilight and there’s no shortage of Remnant to study. If she didn’t have such a wanderlust she could definitely imagine another life as a scientist seconded to Pelaav Station.

How do they feel about the Remnant? Are they worried? Curious? Simply accepting of what they can do with it?

Being a former Prothean researcher, Greta is right at home in a world filled with ancient, mysterious alien relics from a long lost civilisation. And being a tech head, the ability to couple Remnant technology with their own is a big draw.

Do they ever wish they could just return to the Milky Way? Do they miss anything in particular about their old home? Did they bring anything special with them?

It would be odd not to want to go home; for one thing, you just can’t get a decent steak on the Nexus, given the rationing and limitations. Sometimes it’s nice to fantasise about her former life, where if she ran out of something, she could just go to a shop.

Thankfully, her excitement and interest in the exploration and discovery far outweigh the minor inconveniences.

How do they feel about what they’ve accomplished in Helius? Are they proud? Worried? Do they feel positive about the chances for a cluster-wide unity? If they could change anything that had happened since everyone arrived in the cluster, what would it be and why?

The journey to Meridian and beyond showed the power of a united galaxy, even with the limited resources of both the Nexus species and the angaran resistance. Reuniting the 4 main pathfinders, with word of the quarians still out there too, not to mention the krogan colony, was a huge effort but this union drove out a terrible threat and learned more about a cluster than ever before. The overarching feeling of the whole experience is one of hope. There’s much more work to be done, but with everyone working together, there’s nothing that can stop us.

#mass effect #spoilers #andromeda spoilers #mass effect andromeda #meandromeda #andromeda #mass effect spoilers #meme #ryder #greta ryder

[gamethyme]

Let's Talk About 5E, Shall We?

I eat a lot of Mexican food. Probably too much, actually. But when I go to a new place, I'll generally order either something I've never seen before or chicken fajitas.

"Something I've never seen before" is pretty obvious. Those are likely to be the specialty of the house and will set them apart from the tacos and burritos that are ubiquitous on Mexican menus. Chicken Fajitas are a little less obvious - it's because chicken is a good platform to highlight unique or special spice blends. And I've never had two chicken fajitas that tasted the same. My wife, by contrast, orders enchiladas. Most of the flavor of an enchilada comes from the sauce, and - much like fajita spice - that can vary wildly from restaurant to restaurant. Most Mexican restaurants have more than one enchilada sauce (and many of them allow you to mix and match sauces on your enchiladas). So what does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons?  Especially the fifth edition of same? A lot, actually. I've been playing D&D since I was ten. It was 1e at the time, and we played it on the playground at recess. I didn't get to play a lot, as my parents were part of the satanic panic of the eighties. This means I definitely wasn't allowed to own any books or dice. Because of this, I played the simplest class. The one that had the fewest complex rules. In 1e, that meant I played a fighter. Why? Because the fighter's only real decision was "Which foe do I want to hit?"  Mechanically, 1e fighters were (and continue to be) super-boring. By the time 2e rolled around, I was familiar enough with the rules that I was able to play something different. I dabbled with Wizards and Rogues before settling on (don't laugh) Bards. Because Fighters continued to be boring. When Wizards dropped 3e on us, Feats made some interesting changes. Suddenly every class had interesting customization options (and Fighters were more interesting). Some of the fighter feats meant that there were occasional interesting decisions to be made. I only played a tiny bit of 3e (I was much more a DM than a player at that point).  By the end of 3e's run, however, it'd turned into an optimization game. "The best fighter takes and and ." Or "Check out this broken Feat combo!" Pathfinder took the optimization aspects of 3e and turned them up to eleven. The game's power curve was structured so that players who didn't optimize were left behind. It also highlighted those parts of 3e that I didn't like, turning them into the focus of play. Note that I'm very carefully not saying "Pathfinder was bad." I'm saying, "Pathfinder wasn't for me." Then we hit 4e. Suddenly every class was equally interesting. And theoretically balanced. Fighter powers/abilities hit harder or applied status effects (stun and knockdown were pretty common). Wizard powers/abilities did elementally-flavored damage and applied different status effects to foes. Feats were less-important than power selection. And now we have 5e. For those of you who are wondering, I haven't broken my self-imposed boycott of 5e. I received a copy of the Player's Handbook (PHB), Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG), and Monster Manual (MM) as gifts from a friend.  I spent the next few days following that gift reading the 5e PHB and ... meh.  I don't get all the love it gets. One friend, when he saw that I had 5e in my hands, asked if I was "finally tired of that tactical combat simulator" that 4e was. I've got news for you, Matt: All editions of D&D are tactical combat simulators. And 4e is the best/most interesting of the bunch for most classes. Every edition of D&D has fallen desperately short when it came to mechanically rewarding non-combat encounters. Which means that 5e is - for what I want in a game - significantly less-good than 4e. Because it's a less-detailed tactical combat simulator. Reading through 5e, it's like a bizarre cross between 2e and 3e. There's good in there, mind you, but for the most part it strikes me as a huge step backwards. The only real "killer app" of 5e is the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanism. And possibly "Inspiration," which lets you trigger Advantage. I did what I often do when I confront something that is so popular that I just plain don't understand: I went online and asked my friends. Here's what I heard from them:

Combat in 5e is faster. This is both bug and feature, as you can have multiple small combat encounters in a single session, but big set-piece battles are less interesting.

Classes in 5e have three sub-classes that characters move into at 3rd level. Only one of the Fighter subclasses is boring 2e Hit 'Em more/better.

There are fewer ways to apply fewer status effects in 5e, which is cleaner and easier to understand for newer players.

Combat in 5e supports "theater of the mind" better than 4e and 3e. While you can use a map and grid, it's not as strictly required as it was in those editions.

DIY players have an easier time tweaking 5e, as 4e was so tightly interconnected. Creating a power here-and-there for 4e was simple enough, but creating new classes was a lot of work.

Even a lot of 5e players expressed frustration with how boring and limited it felt after a very short time. One friend said, "Loved 5 E at first, got bored with it after a couple of years." And that was pretty close to consensus.

5E hits on more cylinders than 4E for me and also has some good ideas. I have played it several times and will likely play it again. 

All things considered, I would still prefer to play OSRIC, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Blueholme, or Low Fantasy Gaming.

Other games came up, too. Both OSR retroclones and newer branches of the d20 tree (Pathfinder and 13th Age especially). And games that aren't from that family (Fantasy Age got a lot of love).

Indie gaming legend Ron Edwards left a long comment that I'm going to quote in full, here:

I just played 5E for the first time, just a couple of days ago, as a player. It struck me as a very 2000s game, maybe even 2010 on the nose. That's not a slam, but identifying it very much as of its era, and not any kind of old-school whatnot which in this case makes most sense as precise marketing.

More importantly, as a game, it is caught like a writhing insect in what I called The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. If I play my character, in the sense of all this characterization and agency that the creation process fires up, then the DM cannot create the story, as everything about DMing and especially the published scenarios and campaigns emphasizes. And vice versa, perhaps especially, vice versa. Everything for the player presumes a DM who isn't actually the DM as written/encouraged, and everything for the DM presumes players who aren't actually those players as written/encouraged. The net effect is almost always the same: the players are reduced to posturing, establishing and repeating tropes, and (eventually) goofing in order to enjoy themselves, as the DM waltzes them through fights that lead to clues, and clues that lead to fights. 

Exalted, all over again, and that's merely a refined point of reference among a sea of game texts of this kind. 

As with so many of these games, the solution is obvious: pick one or the other, and ignore, as in obviate, reject, abandon, defy, reverse the text and most of the rules concerning the one you didn't pick. But that solution is not arrived at very often. The more usual one is to play while insisting loudly online that this is the most awesome thing ever, then to limp along wondering about or resigned to the necessary outcomes of the Impossible Thing, and eventually to shift into lonely fun with one's extremely expensive purchases.

 There was also a ton of nostalgia for 3.x.  Publisher/designer Cam Banks said (in one of his comments):

When I moved to 4E, I hit a wall with the way the game was designed to centre around powers/techniques/etc. As a 3rd edition designer, I knew that system back to front; I could come up with stats and monsters and spells on the fly, and I even ad hoc'd a prestige class for a player (and wrote the whole thing up the next day). 4E was an inscrutable black box by comparison. I ran it like I ran 3E, and stumbled. I couldn't make my own classes easily, I couldn't eyeball anything, even with the famous page 42. It was extraordinarily frustrating because I liked what they were doing with the game, but the game didn't let me in.

 Peter Darley said:

It seems like D&Ds primary strength, in any edition, is to be a lowest common denominator. I don't think I would ever chose to run or play it given the universe of games available, but since not everyone likes the same stuff, D&D is often something that people can agree on.

 I had more than fifty comments on that post.  I'd link to it, but it's on Plus and Google is shutting that down next week, so the link would be useless.  There was disagreement, but not much. And it never got heated. So the long and short of it, for me, is this: If I am forced to play D&D and am given a choice of edition, I will still choose fourth edition. I can see some of the appeal of fifth, and I might play it a bit to see how it compares to second and third, but I don't see anything there that I can't easily find in a dozen other games.  Realistically, though, I'm more likely to play something else. I didn't get into it here, but it's worth mentioning that the DMG for fifth edition is quite good with some solid advice that applies regardless of the game being played. It's a shame that the game itself is so uninspired. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Ulyp0F via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

[kayawagner]

The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide Review

I really enjoy books about roleplaying games. Not just products that are rulebooks, supplements, or adventures, but products that discuss the process of roleplaying. I enjoy products that discuss how to run games, and how to play them. Even in a single game system, the value added to long-term play by looking at the game from multiple directions is tremendous.

There is no shortage of books that look at roleplaying games from the perspective of game moderators. In fact, some of the other gnomes have been involved in some amazing books on the topics of preparing, managing, and executing various games at the table. What is less common is a book about roleplaying that isn’t designed for a particular system that is aimed squarely at players instead of moderators.

There is an increasing number of games that give players an opportunity to flesh out their player characters in deep and interesting ways. Traveller was one of the earliest RPGs to address detailed backstory with its lifepath system, which some modern games such as Modiphius’ Conan and Star Trek also use. Pathfinder includes Character Background rules in Ultimate Campaign. Shadow of the Demon Lord has some detailed character background tables in the core rules, which are expanded in the Victims of the Demon Lord line of supplements. The Dungeons and Dragons supplement Xanathar’s Guide to Everything also includes a detailed This is Your Life section that can be used to generate a more detailed backstory.

System specific backstory rules can be useful but are often created as a means of narrowing mechanically defined character options. In other words, these backstory elements often explain why a character picks the game elements they have for a character or narrows the options to help eliminate option paralysis. That doesn’t mean they those backstory systems are deficient, it just means that even the depth that is added in those systems may not touch on important backstory elements or motivations that a character might have.

The next natural extension of this would be for a player to have a guide that isn’t tied to a specific game system or setting. A guide aimed at getting a player to get inside their character’s head in a way that isn’t just a means of determining if they should specialize in using a sword or an axe. The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a book that aims to add details to a character’s life story that aren’t just a means of justifying what game elements went into mechanically building that character.

The Chronicle of Chronicles

This review is based both on the paperback version of the book, and on the Kindle version.

The book is 272 pages long. It contains no illustrations, but does have solid formatting throughout, with headers, bullet points, lists, and call out boxes. The colors present in the book are black and orange-red. The formatting for the various bullet points and lists remains consistent in the Kindle version of the book. Because so much of the book is comprised of lists and questions, the formatting makes it very easy to follow from one exercise to another.

Introduction and What Can We Accomplish?

The first three pages of the book establish the goal of this work. There are numerous exercises in the book to help a player find the perspective of their character. These exercises are largely written with a game like Dungeons and Dragons in mind, but the What Can We Accomplish section helps to define the power level and experience of a player for which an exercise is written.

Humble Beginnings

As you might expect from the title, these exercises are for low-level characters to help determine how they got into adventuring in the first place, and how they determine party dynamics as they first begin to work with one another. The suggested character range is levels 1-7, but that’s essentially short hand for adventurers that are still relatively new to adventuring.

The following exercises exist in this section:

Idioms

Save the Cat

Holidays

What Gets Left Behind

Beanstalk

Five Lessons

Ventur

My Associates

Across a Crowded Tavern

Orphan Details

What Can You Do For Me?

A Matter of Status

What Drives You Forward?

Where I’m From

Finders Keepers

Well Worn

Five Things You Packed but Shouldn’t Have

Of the Cloth

Five Fears

What Does It Mean to Be . . . ?

Private Mysteries

Prophesy Half-Remembered

On the Line

Red Flags

Damn Merlinials

Rival

The Taming of the Wolverine

My Grimoire

Familiar, but Not Too Familiar

A Touch of Home

Vision of the Future

Mentor

Magic Mirrors

Visualizing Intellect

Some of these exercises cover the basics you would expect when discussing a character’s backstory, like the very basics of where they were from, and the people that they knew. Other exercises go a bit deeper, examining how a member of the party would petition another to gain their help for a goal, as well as examining what it means to have interactions with characters that have a different status (higher or lower) than the player character.

Some of the exercises are relatively straightforward, while others are multi-step procedures that build on the answers provided in previous steps.

Veteran Heroes 

These are questions geared towards characters that have been adventuring for a while. The level range provided for a more traditional D&D style game is 8-14, but it’s easy enough to use this for characters that have been working as adventurers for a significant amount of time in non-level-based systems.

The exercises in this section include the following:

Five Scars

Wed, Bed, or Behead

The One that Got Away

Never Have I Ever . . .

Last Will

My Friends

I Know You From Somewhere

Five Things You Can’t Throw Away

These Things Rarely Work Out

A Traveler’s Taste

I’ve Heard Stories About These

Cursed

We Clean Up Well

Song of Folly

Old Haunts

Atonement

Wanted

It’s More Than Personal

Movements of a Master

Campfire

Hero’s Best Friend

Unheard Confession

A Taste of Death

Conquered Fear

Getting to Know You

A Show of Force

Five Times Your Name Was Cursed

Mountains and Molehills

Life Goes On

In the Eye of My Enemy

Irrational Taste

Fish Story

You Have No Idea

The Gauntlet

Honey Pot

Trusty Steed

The exercises in this section are designed to add details that characters may not have thought to stop and add as they began to advance in levels or get more adventures under their belts. Many of them examine how the appearance of a character may have changed, or how they might describe their fighting style or abilities differently now.

Instead of having exercises about how the group deals with sudden adversity, there are exercises that look at how the group would plan for events that they know are coming. Additionally, there are exercises that ask about what supporting characters and areas look like now that the PCs have left their mark.

Some of my personal favorites are “I’ve Heard Stories About These,” which is a generator for coming up with wildly inaccurate things a character might believe about a monster they still haven’t run into at this point in their career, and “Fish Stories,” which is a guide to determining how exaggerated an exploit from your past has become. I couldn’t help but think of the Hero of Canton from Firefly.

Myths and Legends

The final section of exercises is recommended for characters of levels 15-20, or at least those adventurers that have become larger than life in the campaign.

The exercises for this section include:

Tower of Terror

Monuments

Classifying Villains

Home Heraldry

“It Is My Distinct Please to Announce . . . “

God, No

Five Commandments

Pocket Dimension

For the Myth that Has Everything

Inventory

Art of Facts

Terror of Wisdom

A Cutlass Carol

Private Secrets

It Sounds Good on Paper

I Knew Them Well

Alive Only in Memory

Collecting Dust

Sign of a Legend

Hobby

Five Lives

You Made It Weird

In the Eyes of Mortals

Hangover

Apprentice

Five Enemies

Impossible Trial

Not Looking to Get Merlined

Crisis of Faith

Your Kind of King

The exercises in this section deal with campaign elements such as how a character may have made a major change in the setting without contemplating the ramifications, as well as looking forward to how the character’s actions will be viewed in a historical context. There are also exercises that look at how many enemies a character has vanquished and what that means, people and places that are long gone, and how supporting characters in the service of the player character operate or act.

Some of my favorites in the section are “God, No,” which is an exercise that details how the player character would deal with a visit from a deity, and “For the Myth That Has Everything,” which is about trying to determine what you could provide your fellow epic player characters as a gift.

Ultimate Ups

 The book does a wonderful job of bringing up motivations and off-screen events that neither a player nor a game moderator would commonly think to add to a game. 

The book is a great resource for thought exercises. Just reading through the exercises without doing them is entertaining, but there are some deep character examinations that can evolve by following several of the multi-step procedures.

Wandering Guide

It’s not really a downside, but because there are so many exercises, it may be easy to get lost in them if you really want to specifically narrow down some details about your character. Being written through the lens of games with similar conventions to Dungeons and Dragons means that some exercises will either not be as useful to non-fantasy gamers or may take a little bit of adaptation to be useful. Some of the exercises, by default, give the player a little more world-building authority than a game moderator may be willing to hand out, especially if they are playing in an established setting. While entertaining, some of the exercises exist just to be humorous, and don’t do much to flesh out the backstory or history of a character.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

Anyone that has been a player in an RPG is likely to get some enjoyment from this product, even if it is geared towards fantasy gaming. Even without using it to flesh out a specific character, the various exercises are both entertaining and instructive about the kinds of elements players may want to add to a character. Reading the exercises is also likely to give a game moderator some ideas about what questions they want to answer over the long term in established campaigns.

What are your favorite system agnostic, player-facing products? How often do you read products about roleplaying games that aren’t about a specific system or genre? We would love to hear from you in the comments below!

The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide Review published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[swipestream]

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 1

The big news from the Paizo arena is, of course, their Pathfinder Playtest. I picked up a copy of the physical rulebook at my FLGS about a month ago with the intent of writing a review. Guess what? This is that review. Normally, I have a system for my reviews of RPG products, but I’m going to set that aside for this effort since the book is bigger than simply cover art, mechanics, prose, layout, and interior art. This review will be split up over the course of multiple articles because of the in-depth nature of the playtest book.

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

The book is split up into twelve different sections:

Overview

Ancestry

Classes

Skills

Feats

Equipment

Spells

Advancement and Options

Playing the Game

Game Mastering

Treasure

Appendices

In this segment of the review, I’ll be covering Overview through Classes. The rest of the book will follow in other articles.

Overview

What is a Roleplaying Game?

 The “Gaming is for All” segment speaks very well to the fact that each player is different. 

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The Overview section starts with the typical “What is a Roleplaying Game?” segment, but Paizo does a fine job in this section. It covers more than the typical basics of players, characters, game masters, collaborative storytelling, and other things found in these types of entries. It’s a great introduction to RPGs for new players as well as a solid reminder to veteran players and GMs why they are at the table and how to comport themselves while gaming.

The section here that impressed me the most was the “Gaming is for All” part where Paizo dives into responsibilities as a player and GM at the table. It’s not just “pay attention” or “know the rules.” As a matter of fact, these aren’t even mentioned. The “Gaming is for All” segment speaks very well to the fact that each player comes from a different background, culture, family, environment, and so on that influences how they play. No player (or the GM) should contribute to behavior (in or out of character) that promotes or reinforces racism, bigotry, hatred, or any other form of action that can offend, make someone uncomfortable, or that will drive someone from the hobby. These are strong statements, and I feel they need to be said.

The book also states that no one at the table (especially the GM) should allow this kind of behavior to exist at the table. I’m very happy Paizo included these segments. Also, for the first time in a major publication, I now see reference to a social contract (search in the upper right corner for this phrase for multiple Gnome Stew articles on this topic).

Basic Concepts

This section explains things in very clear terms. There are quite a few core changes to a familiar product, and having these Basic Concepts explained up front helped me wrap my head around things that I’ve known in my heart for the past nine years. It set me up to adjust how I see the rules for the new version of Pathfinder, and it also was a great introduction to the basics of the rules for those new to Pathfinder.

Activities

To help simplify the game, the overview gives three options for activities a PC can take during a single round. These are Actions, Reactions, and Free Actions. Each PC gets 3 Actions and 1 Reaction per round. Some activities may consume more than 1 Action, so while this sounds like quite a few things going on in a round, I doubt it’ll be quite as crazy as first impressions give. To be honest, it feels like it’s simplified things, so it will be (I hope) easier to avoid analysis paralysis that some players (and GMs) go through when presented with all of the options available to a higher-level character.

Key Terms

The Key Terms section runs through an alphabetical list of terms that constitute the core of the game with clear summations of what the terms mean to players and to the game. Again, this section helped me mentally point out to myself where the game is changing from the first edition.

Character Creation

The character creation overview section did leave me a little lost. While page numbers were listed to refer to the more in-depth rule explanations, I found myself flipping around the book to excess. There are only nine major steps to character creation, but each of those nine expand out considerably with sub-steps and references. The sample character sheet on page 11 calls out the various places you have to fill out. There are 27 different things to go through. This is on par with the first edition of Pathfinder, and many editions of D&D, so I don’t feel it’s too much to handle. However, I felt like there could be a little more explanation of each of the nine steps in the Overview section of the book. This could have prevented the flipping around the book like I did. Of course, I’m comparing this experience to what I do with the current version of Pathfinder, which I know well enough to be able to skip over sections I don’t need and get directly to the meat of where I need to read for the character choices I’ve made. I suspect I can get comfortable enough with the new version to do this as well.

Ability Scores

 Rolling for ability scores is now optional! 

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Here is a doozy of a change! Rolling for ability scores is now optional! You read that right. The core mechanic of developing your character’s six main abilities (which haven’t changed in this edition), is now an additive system. Everyone starts with a base 10 in each ability. Then the player will subtract or add (mostly add) 2 points to specific abilities depending on their choices in ancestry, class, background, and so on. There are quite a few options in there that are “Free boost” where the player can pick which ability to add their 2 points to. This means that every “elf ranger” won’t end up with the same ability scores. One thing I love about their changes is that no single ability can be above 18 at first level. They can creep above that threshold at higher levels, but not to start the game with. This helps prevent a considerable amount of min/max building for starting characters that is possible with decent die rolls and munchkin builds in the current version of Pathfinder. Their two side-by-side examples of generating ability scores in the playtest were very clear and illuminated the process very well.

An Aside: Alignment

 I feel leaving alignment in the game is a missed opportunity for Paizo to do something better in this area. 

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As you can already tell, there are quite a few changes to how things are approached in this version. Unfortunately (in my opinion), alignment remains attached to Pathfinder. I had hoped with this new version that Paizo would take advantage of the shifts and ditch this outdated, often ignored, and clunky method of determining a moral base for characters. I feel leaving alignment in the game is a missed opportunity for Paizo to do something better in this area.

Another Aside: Hit Points

A very clear change to the game is that rolling for hit points at each level is now a thing of the past. Instead, each character starts with a base amount for the chosen ancestry, adds some more hit points based on the chosen class, and then adds more hit points with each level taken. Maybe I’m just being a grumpy grognard here, but I feel like this is a violation of the spirit of Pathfinder’s storied history. Few die rolls are more important (or thrilling) than the vaunted “roll your hit points” moment. Then again, it always sucks to roll a natural 1 in those times, so I guess I can get used to the steady increase in hit points.

Ancestry

You’ll notice so far that I’ve not used the word “race” within this article to describe a character option. That’s because Paizo has taken the correct forward step to remove this off-putting, charged, and insensitive word to rest in their game materials. From here on out, Paizo will be using Ancestry as the overarching label for dwarves, elves, humans, etc. Hats off to Paizo for doing the right thing for the members of our community.

I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow of each ancestry presented in the book. That would probably be an article unto itself, and I’d rather not have this series of reviews run on until the actual game comes out.

 Hats off to Paizo for doing the right thing for the members of our community. 

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Each ancestry (except for humans, oh those complex humans) is covered by a two-page spread. There are ancestral feats only available to the specifically listed ancestries. Most of them are options at first level, but some can only be taken at fifth (or higher) level. The samples in the book include many first level options and only a few fifth level options. There are none for levels higher than that, so I am assuming the final product (which will most likely be larger than the 427-page playtest book) will have these options. Of course, expansion and splat books will expand these lists considerably. One addition is a “heritage” feat, which can only be taken at first level. These heritage feats help establish some core principles of the character, and are, quite honestly, pretty cool. I like these inclusions.

Before I move on from ancestries, I want to point out that goblins are in as an officially playable ancestry. This, as you can probably tell, makes me happy. These plucky little fellows have been fodder and mooks for way too long. I’m not surprised that Paizo made this move based on the wide variety of goblin-centric products they’ve released over the years.

Unfortunately, I have something in the ancestries that makes me sad. Half-orcs and half-elves are now just specific types of humans, and a feat has to be used to gain access to the orc or elf ancestry goodies at a later level. I’m not sure I like this change because it’s going to reduce the number of players playing these ancestries. This removes some diversity from the gaming gene pool, and I’m not entirely convinced this is a good thing. Perhaps things will be adjusted in the final version that’s not apparent in the playtest book that will make this a good decision from Paizo.

Backgrounds

Paizo included a brief list (two pages worth) of backgrounds to pick from during character generation. I really hope they expand upon this list. What they have is pretty solid, but I can see players clamoring for more options, and we GMs will have to deliver. These backgrounds are used to tweak characters, make them unique, and boost abilities, feats, and skills. I love the inclusion of these types of things in modern RPGs, and Paizo has a good start here. (As a note: I really want to play someone who has a Barkeep background now.)

Languages

Everything in here is pretty typical of what most players expect to find in this section based on the past 40+ years of roleplaying game publishing. However, Paizo has also included a section on sign language. This is pretty cool. It’s a great description of sign language, how it impacts the game, and how it can be used. I love that they’ve acknowledged not everyone has the ability to speak or hear, thus increases the inclusivity of their game another notch.

Classes

As with ancestries, I’m not going to do a deep dive into each class. That would also be an entire article unto itself. The most interesting change here is the addition of the alchemist as a playable class to the core list. All of the usual classes players are used to finding are still in the book, so don’t fret that your favorite core class won’t exist until the proper expansion book is published.

Each class, like with the ancestries, gets certain base abilities automatically, then there is a list of feats to choose from at the various levels as the character advances. Because of the vast number of combinations going on here (ancestries, ancestral feats, backgrounds, classes, and class feats), I can see character creation and leveling up taking some time because of the inclination to want to pick the best thing for a character. This will up the levels of analysis paralysis in many players, so be warned. This will only become worse as more content is added to this version of the game.

Having said this, I don’t think this is a bad thing. I love many options to pick from. This allows me, as a player, to play a cleric in back-to-back campaigns, but without playing the same cleric both times. This makes me happy, but I still felt the need to point out the possible issue with so many choices laid out before the players.

(I know I said I wouldn’t do a deep dive into the classes, but I have my eye on a monk character for my first Pathfinder Playtest character class. Combine that with the Barkeep background? Hrmm… I wonder how a goblin monk who used to be a barkeep would work out?)

Aside, the Third: Feats

 I recommend Paizo do a massive search/replace for “feat” and drop in the word “talent” because that feels like a more accurate descriptor for what these are in this book. 

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I seem to be mentioning feats quite a bit here. Right? Yeah. I am. That’s because almost every power, ability, spell, trick, or effort is based on a feat. There are quite a few to pick from. While Paizo chose to continue the use of the word “feat,” I suspect the re-use of that label will lead to some false assumptions in the players between the editions. These are not the same power level of feats found in D&D 3.0 through D&D 3.5 and into Pathfinder. The Pathfinder Playtest feats could have been relabeled to avoid confusion. I recommend Paizo do a massive search/replace for “feat” and drop in the word “talent” because that feels like a more accurate descriptor for what these are in this book.

Yet Another Aside: Deities and Domains

One thing I dislike about the first edition Pathfinder core rulebook was the fact that information about the Golarion deities and domains was jammed into the cleric class section. I can see the decision behind this, but in a world where the deities can directly impact life in more than the spiritual sense, there will be more believers and worshippers. This includes non-clerics. I feel like the descriptions and summaries of the deities deserves its own sub-section within the book, not a sidebar for clerics. Unfortunately, Paizo made the same decision here. I’d love to see more pages dedicated to their deities (like they did with the Key Terms section). Of course, not everyone is going to use Golarion in their games at home, but since the defaults of Pathfinder assume Golarion it’s safe to dedicate more paper and ink to the deities.

For the domains in the cleric section, I love the list here. It feels comprehensive, expanded, and with more cool options for the multitude of those that wield holy (and unholy) powers.

Conclusion, For Now

Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I see up through the Classes section of the book. I hope this review has been helpful to you if you’re on the fence about downloading the PDF (or buying the book). Up next, I’ll dive into Skills, Feats, and Equipment. If word count for the next section allows, I’ll also briefly cover the Spells section, but without doing a deep dive into each spell.

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 1 published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[yes-this-is-sam]

WIP MEME

List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets - anything at all!

I was tagged by the extraordinary @sexy-salmon thank you hun!

Aight.... shoot, gotta collect all my notes.

1) Escaping Ostagar:

This one is my only current Dragon Age fic. It’s... been a labour of love. My baby Melisande is a bit of a self-insert, I was maybe trying to use her to get a hold on my own PTSD. Maybe I cared way too much about this damn story. I’ve been working on it since Dec 2016 and it was the very first of my own writing I ever tried to share with anyone. Twice now I’ve given up on it despite having the last 12 chapters planned out. I still want to finish it but... I gotta get to a point where it doesn’t hurt that it got little attention. Like I said, I invested way too much into it. 

2) I Have To Try:

WOOO Currently my most progressed new story-child. Probably going to start posting it soon. Set in Andromeda, it follows none other than a bedraggled Avitus Rix in his new and initially unwelcome role as Pathfinder and the creation of his Pathfinding team. I didn’t like that we didn’t even hear news or anything playing about the other Pathfinder’s efforts to make their own colonies and help in whatever ways they could. A couple cameos where they take back seat to Ryder, which is unfair to ALL of the Pathfinders. Why put the other races and the entire Initiative on Ryder’s shoulders when the others have more experience and just as many resources? Kaetus gets dragged along for the ride, as well as an APEX team led by the fierce ex-Cabal Vitetoria Digeris. 

3) Though This Be Madness:

Hehehe this one certainly lives up to its name more than I expected. The story focuses around the blog’s namesake Samantha Curtis along with her wayward AI OPI, her adopted Batarian family Ragar and Ecetia, and the Krogan she knows way too much about Ganar Jirr. This one I'm taking a step back on to rethink how I'm gonna set it up. Originally it started right before the Initiative left for Andromeda and followed Sam taking on both an incurable illness and the Kett she needs to stay alive AND trying to outrun every faction now after them both.... BUT THEN SAM FELL IN LOVE. She met Rexis Sarex, an adorable troublemaker created by @masseffectoc and now I can’t write them apart. I got permission to include her characters in the story too and IT WILL BE GLORIOUS SHENANIGANS. If I start at the same place I was going to, it’ll still work but miss a lot of character and relationship building. SO I’ll either back up and start from farther back and end up with something as long as goddamn GRRM’s books, or I’ll split it into 2 and make a prequel where Sam and Rex meet and all the characters come together and decide to go with them to Andromeda or not. At least..... the ones who survive. Mwahahaha.

4) Chronicles of Jirr:

Ok, I’ll be the first to admit it. Ganar Jirr was originally just a nameless NPC I randomly created to give Sam a funny story to tell and amuse Rexis. Now he is one of my most dynamic characters I’ve ever made, I think. Affectionately nicknamed Krogan James Bond, by myself, this will be a series of stories told alternate BY him or about him. The ones told by him will probably be ridiculously exaggerated or entirely made up, fair warning. 

5) Blast Off:

This is gonna be a surprise for masseffectoc for her birthdaaaaaay so I'm not gonna say more than I told her. Which is that it’s an addition to Having A Blast, a silly fic pair I made for Sam and Rexis and his obsession with Blasto. 

6) Untitled (thus far):

I recently heard of a 10k word count challenge for the month of March, held by @mebigbang and I’m thinking of doing something for it. It sounds mildly terrifying but an excellent challenge and one I know I can hit the word count on (HA) if my other fics are of any indication. I tagged their blog here so if any artists or authors are interested (there’s an art part as well to Mass Effect Big Bang) you can check it out. I’ve got a couple ideas floating around but given that there’s a level of anonymity I won’t describe them just yet. I don’t wanna break the rules before I decide if I even can jump in. 

7) Post ME3 - currently untitled:

My take on the end of ME3 and how the people I care about make it through, a Garrus/Shep fic. It’s pretty amorphous atm since my OC fics have been taking up much more of my time. 

8) Halfsies:

Alright, this one is... urk. It’s the most conceptualized original idea I’ve had yet to date. It’s one I’ve put together enough to potentially go through on. I just don’t know if I’m good enough to get published and I’ve been so stressed with life stuff going on the last few years I’m still at concept stage. Anyway, premise... let me see if I can even describe this right.

Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye and for an instant you know it’s real and you HAVE to look at it but then as soon as you do you explain it away? Oh that was just the shadow off the vase. Damn, my cat scared the shit out of me. Those are Halfsies. Halfsies live halfway been this realm and another and have no form until they’re fully Recognised. They WANT to be Recognised. It is the only driving need they have and they fight viciously for it, to be made Real. Our main character makes a game out of trying to trick herself into believing what startles her is real instead of explaining it away automatically and one day she accidentally makes one Real. The form it takes is exactly what the MC imagined so it’s rather cartoonish and surreal looking, but it immediately grabs the MC and tells it to stop. That ALL of the Halfsies, literally there are no ways to count them because they don’t have form and always create more, now know the MC can make them Real, Recognise them. And they ALL are after the MC now and will do anything, drive them insane if they have to, in order to be made Real. And the MC has to rely on their befriended Halfsie and a few other friends to escape. 

Alright, I know I have more. I ALWAYS have more. But these are the only ones coming to mind right now. 

Tagging @shekissesturians @isharaytaoshay @daddyvictus and @ithewriter

#wip meme #god that's a lot #fuck I wish I could just... #write for a living