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open-hearth-rpg · 6 months

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Campaign Playbooks: Great RPG Mechanics #RPGMechanics: Week Six

I’m getting ready tonight to do the first session of Girl By Moonlight. It’s a Forged in the Dark game with a wide premise– ranging from Magical Girl to Paprika to Evangelion-inspired stories. We’re doing On a Sea of Stars, the one most influenced by mecha, teens, and tragedy. Girl By Moonlight is one of two recent systems which take Forged in the Dark’s Crew mechanics and change them into a tool to redefine the game collaboratively.

The other one, and the one I’ve already run, is Vergence. This is a FitD game heavily influenced by the Chronicles of Amber. It mixes things up in some interesting ways. For example, it has a trio of factions rather than the binary two courts of Zelanzy’s original novels. That smart move offers players a more complex web of interactions. In particular I dig that each faction has its own set of playbooks highlighting their themes.

Vergence also takes a nod from the earlier Amber RPG (which I’ve also run). In that game you had two modes of play: a standard campaign and a Throne War. The latter had its own set of special rules, aimed at playing out a tighter series or even a one-shot with different play goals. Vergence also allows for several different modes of play, each with a strong sense of structure and purpose:

The Dark Conspiracy: An unknown enemy has chosen to act directly and violently against the PCs and all they hold dear.

The Expedition: The PCs are part of a journey of exploration to a forbidden world.

The Game of Houses: The PCs undertake a series of missions to support a chosen Vergence faction.

The Masked Ball: The PCs will attend a Royal Masked Ball and try to accomplish various goals without ruining their reputations.

The Pursuit: The PCs are chasing a vile enemy through the Umbra. What happens if they catch up?

The Siege: The PCs are trapped in a city under siege. They must fight, escape, or go over to the other side.

The different campaign frames have distinct usual lengths. For example if you want a one-shot, you would do The Pursuit. For a longer campaign (4-10) sessions, you might pick Masked Ball, Expedition, or Seige. If you’re looking for an ongoing, episodic campaign you would pick Game of Houses.

Each of these campaigns, called Challenges, has its own playbook, the equivalent of the crew book from Blades. Each challenge offers guidance for setting up relationships, possible starting upgrades, and choices of special abilities. They also have a set of unique milestones and other details. There’s some overlap between the Challenges but they feel nicely distinct. It does a great job of setting expectations right away. In our play-through we dug the mechanic, but wanted a little more.

Girl By Moonlight provides that more– with the different campaign structures at the heart of play. Each of the four series presented has a distinct “series playbook” set up quite differently from one another. For example On a Sea of Stars has both the Flagship the characters are travelling on and the mecha, Engines, they are using as a the campaigns framework. I especially like how asymmetrical these playbooks are. They feel like pieces from distinct and different games. They’re a great tool to shape play.

It would be interesting to see more games offer these kinds of tools– in combination with a CATS document. For example, I love the campaign frames from Thirsty Sword Lesbians, probably more than I dig TSL itself. It would be really interesting to have some richer worksheets and choices which could be made to add to the collaboration and mechanically vary play. There’s a little bit of that in the recent Codex of Worlds for Monster of the Week.

#ttrpg #rpg #rpg mechanics

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sovonight · 4 months

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I've been considering playing Baldur's Gate because of you. Do you recommend it What is a good order to play the games in??

absolutely i recommend it!

first off, it's important to know that bg1 & bg2 are their own story, and bg3 is practically separate from them. bg3 is set a century after the events of bg1/bg2, and just has a few character cameos and references from bg1/bg2 (though from what i've heard some of the cameos aren't very good interpretations of the original characters). bg3 doesn't enhance the bg1/bg2 story in any way, and knowledge of bg1/bg2 doesn't matter when playing bg3.

i'd suggest starting with bg3 if you:

are used to modern rpg games, and 3d visuals are particularly important to you

know you don't/won't like infinity engine games (for a spoiler-free preview, look up walkthroughs of icewind dale 1 or 2 and watch a couple minutes of travel, dialogue, and combat gameplay)

i'd suggest starting with bg1/bg2 if you:

don't have a strong preference for starting with bg3 instead

enjoy the potential for mods to expand the game--not just in terms of gameplay, but in story/quest additions and companions, too

are interested in knowing the story that i'm drawing all my fanart of

have a limited budget (you can get these games for very cheap, they frequently go on sale)

if you want to start with bg3, you're all set! go ahead and get started. if you want to start with bg1/bg2, i have a bit more to add:

if you've looked into buying these games, you may have noticed that there's bg1/bg2, and then there's bgee/bg2ee (ee meaning "enhanced edition"). there's also a new dlc that's ee-only. so here's the original playing order:

baldur's gate (bg1)

baldur's gate: tales of the sword coast (tosc): bg1 expansion, adds new side quests and areas to explore during bg1

baldur's gate ii: shadows of amn (bg2, sometimes abbreviated soa to distinguish from tob below)

baldur's gate ii: throne of bhaal (tob): bg2 expansion, directly continues the story from soa and officially ends the series

and here's the enhanced edition order:

baldur's gate: enhanced edition (bgee): contains bg1 and tosc

baldur's gate: seige of dragonspear (sod): bg1 expansion released in 2016 to bridge the gap between bg1 and bg2 (i haven't played it yet, but if you're just testing out the series i'd say don't bother getting it yet, it was released 15 years after the story concluded so how necessary can it really be)

baldur's gate ii: enhanced edition (bg2ee): contains soa and tob

the enhanced edition also adds 4 new companions, an arena side adventure, and overall provides a lot of fixes/improvements/updates on the original games. obviously, considering all these additions and the ee mods that have come out since the ee series release, the ee series is where you should start.

side note--if you buy the ee series on gog (maybe on steam too, but i've only checked it on gog) you'll actually get downloads for the original, non-ee games as well. if you enjoy playing old games for the feeling of time-traveling into the past a bit, and you have the patience to fuss around with troubleshooting and mods, they're a perfectly fine place to start as well! (i personally am still playing the non-ee trilogy even now, but that's for a whole mix of reasons, including that i like using the physical cd's i bought them on lmao)

now finally, if you got this far and are thinking "okay, i'm cautiously interested in bg1/bg2, but which one of the two should i start with???"

start with bg2 if you:

just want to jump in and see what all the fuss is about

don't care about having context in the beginning (you'll gain some context as you play, though not all)

want vampires, technology, and more sewers in your d&d experience

prefer a story with darker tones and a lot of driving urgency

start with bg1 if you:

like starting at the beginning to have context for everything that happens

want a standard, classic adventure with camps, forests, and bustling cities

don't need the plot to engage you if your companions are there with conversations, commentary, and banter

are willing to install at least one mod, BG1NPC

i found bg1 to be kind of a slog to get through on my very first playthrough, but adding in character interactions via BG1NPC really livened the game up for me and made it my favorite game out of the series. (imo this works best if you're willing to do a romance though, bc unfortunately romanced companions tend to get the most interactions & care put into their conversations.)

you don't strictly need BG1NPC on bgee bc the ee adds those aforementioned companions who do have conversations with you, but iirc they don't talk as much or provide as many opportunities for interaction as some of the modded companions do. (for context, in the original bg1, companions don't talk to you or comment on events at all; that only became a thing in bg2.) playing bgee without BG1NPC means you'll have to get at least 1 of the 3 ee companions to hear any conversations at all.

anyway, hopefully this wasn't too long or confusing. i hope you try the games out!

#(*i recommend bg1/bg2 of course. we all know how i feel about bg3)#sovo answers

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medicdoodles · 8 months

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A mashup of IDW and Seige canon of Ratchet and Deadlock, meet and run his underground asylum.

Based on Dialogue trees you get from Futomimi and Sakagahi, when you do the Aferlife Bell quest in SMT Nocturne.

For Ratchlock day.

(Next Chapter) || (Last Chapter)

There's a stain shaped like a human.

Work hard, do your best, and eventually you'll get somewhere.

When Ratchet transferred from the highest ranked schooling from Vaporex to the political charged state of Iacon, he expected pointed comments. He expected turned up faces. What he didn't know was how much he would be pushed into being an engineer.

Sure he has some skill in the field, many of his professors have left comments on it but never has he imagined being one. However, Ratchet found that his study to become a medic was going nowhere. Everywhere he went all of the classes would refuse his application, but he didn't give up.

If he wasn't going to be an official student he could still go to classes. When other mechs would sneak out or skip lectures he would slip in. Medic trainees would pay him to do their homework and he took it. All this hard work pays off, he gets the top scores, his engineering career is going well too. When his colleagues get hurt he can repair them better than the campus doctors. Then he graduated...

He gets hired to work on ground bridge operations. It doesn't excite him but it was honest work, and he could save enough money to carry equipment for a first aid kit. Once he was shipped off to the outskirts of the Dead End, that's where he finds his calling.

Since all fast travel in the area was decommissioned, Ratchet was forced to drive out to all locations. It wasn't too bad, but since he was the only one willing to do this job he was on his own. That's when he sees in person just how much Cybertron has abandon.

Streets filled with broken mechs and ruined buildings. There's no hope here, and his white paint lights up against the ash filled air, stains the vision of the city. It was silent until a siren went off in the distance. Despite him knowing the police's pensions for brutality, seeing it with his own eyes still frighten him.

"You're going to be okay." He hears a bot the panic in his voice. "Just hang in there, I'm going to get you help. Just hold on." Ratchet makes it to the voice. It was two bots in the middle of the road, both covered in blood. However, one person is down, closer to death.

"I don't think I can...", said bot also coughs up more blood. "Just wait for me to pass on. Then you can scavenge my parts."

"It's not fair." The mech brakes eye contact, looking to the sky. Then he looks towards the siren lights driving away. "They killed the wrong bot..."

"Let me try to help." Ratchet walks up to two mechs. The back mind is yelling at him, he's a ground bridge operator, an engineer, never even picked ot study medic. He can't do this, but he also can't stand here doing nothing. "I can't promise anything, but please I want to help."

They both look at him with a befuddled faces. He knows they shouldn't trust him but something must have broken because they allow him to help. They let him operate, and by the end of it all they thanked him, and for the first time since he left his home village, he felt proud of himself.

That's when Ratchet knew the direction of where is life is going. He would make money fixing and maintaining public works, taking other jobs, and making as much money as he could to build a clinc. He set it up in the center of Dead End, chosen it to give it resistance the fastest access to him. He worked himself tirelessly between these jobs and for the first time in his life. He managed to find success and happiness.

Do you think my life was a success?

Yes

>No

I see... yeah you might be right.

Just when I thought I achieved happiness, my fortune collapsed like a house of cards.

Then the outside world gotten word about it. The Senate at first only saw the healing of Dead End's bots. That they would start to walk around and they would fix the left over peices of the city. Had enough energy to walk around and wanted to start working.

However, Ratchet soon discovered that this was unwanted. That if Dead End successfully pulled itself together and made it possible to be something, then the fundamental ideology of Functionism would be thrown into question. If that where to happen, what other mechs would go against the class systems set forward by them.

It couldn't stand, so they made sure it didn't, and so they set off a bomb. Framed as an accident during transit from the military bases, they had approved of it being set off. Then they approved of some police officers to do a quick sweep of firing rounds to hit what remained. They're mission wasn't to kill anyone but if the managed too, it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

At the time Ratchet was sent off planet to see if he could assist in fixing a space bridge from Lunar-2 to Tyger Pax. Of course when it played on the news he tried to ground bridge there, but couldn't. His first transporters where destroyed, when he did get back, his clinc as well. Then when he made it home, his house was raided too.

Nothing made him feel so powerless than when he was stopped at the front door. A mech had pinned him against the wall of his assigned room and warned him away from returning to Dead End. That if they found out he went back he wouldn't be able to keep his face.

Worse was when the said mech had his hands wonder all over his body, and said next time he gets sent out he has permission to do as he pleases with him. Ratchet also finds all of his funds were frozen out, and when he does get access to them all of the money had disappeared.

You should be careful. You never know what tomorrow may bring...

After all of that, Ratchet still tries to help. He still returns to assist all the mechs of the city. They still look at him with hopefully eyes, but understanding that they could never crawl out by their own strength. Many where mad at him for even letting them entertain the idea. Others where mad for him, after all it was one thing to steal from bots with nothing on them. It was another to kick the bot who tries to give a hand to someone who needs it.

Most bots however, joined the Decepticons. They believed that if the government had been threatened by their peaceful solution then they would coware at their revolution. All of this would lead to their planet dying, not that the blame could be one sided. The Senate and later the Autobots would fight them to standstill.

Ratchet would find himself in the middle of it. At first he tried to stay neutral but the bots of Dead End where quick to bring up the attack. Then it was shaking down his person and finally braking into his home and ransacking his equipment.

Traitor was branded on his door, then on his frame. When Ratchet returned to work with a still orange smelter on his left hip, his friend Wheeljack, help him join the Autobots. For a time he was safe, the squad he joined even allowed him to repair any bot whom he wanted, even Decepticons were allowed to be fixed.

Do you think my life was a success?

>Yes

That's what everybody else thought, too.

...until that one day.

That was until a superior officer had came down for a vist. When they saw Ratchet repair two mechs with purple badges, they made it clear to him this would stop. If he gets caught again they would charge him with treason and he would be place on the enemy list. That's when he knew he had to go.

Being a deserter was a lighter charge than being a traitor. With his life on the line again, Ratchet has to go, because he could never leave a bot to die. In his spark he could never leave a mech to die without trying. He gives Wheeljack his coordinates, he trust that mech to only uses it when absolutely necessary.

Or at least he did.

The next time he sees his former colleague the bot had brought in toe a former bailiff turned Assassin. They force Ratchet to hand over everything on his person. The bots he was traveling with where tied down and put into custody of the Prime.

For the first time in my life, I had the urge to kill.

He was left on the ground, one push away from the cliffside. Wheeljack had saved his life but at the freedom of others. That's when he tells him to never find him again. That if he truly is sorry, he would only give that location to mechs who need it. They both promised something that day and that would be the last time he would speak to him, or it seemed.

So much anger,

As the war went on, Ratchet would travel. He would make a portable ground bridge went to the next battlefields and collect both parts and bots left behind to die. Like a Grim Reaper, he walks the path of death. However, he wouldn't take life he would do his best to keep it.

Rumor about his presence as a super natural entity made it easier to avoid authority. Many bots who believed in apparitions would come with him quietly. When he repaired them all of them would stay by him. When two bots of different factions would meet, it was almost always up to him to keep them civil.

Then he ran into Deadlock. The bot he gained feelings for. At first he didn't recognize him, but in private the mech tells him about the time they first met. That he was standing in the middle of the road in his friend's arm about to die. Then he adimts about the time he almost turned him to Megatron.

But the only way he could place Deadlock to the incidents is when he spoke those words to him. "Come on Doc, don't think like that. Everyone has kindness in their hearts."

That's when Ratchet's spark drops. This was the mech who was sent to capture him. Who knew of his habit of helping injured bots and almost trapped him into the Decepticons. Whenever he looks at Deadlock now, all he sees is a bot who has changed course, and doesn't he deserve a chance at it.

Ratchet of course also has a bad habit of letting mechs who hurt him do it again. So they both come to an agreement, he repairs Deadlock and takes him to back. The mech agrees to help him out with his operations.

So that's what they did. Ratchet would travel around and Deadlock would follow in tow. Keeping him safe and holding down bots when their reflexes kicked in. Later when their party had gotten too big to travel around and the building became to full. Deadlock drove off without a word.

Weeks became months and when two years passed by the mech came back. He tells Ratchet that he managed to find a bombed down theater that still had functional power. It was large enough for housing and medical care. When he shows him Ratchet is so relieved that he kisses him on the spot.

Deadlock field goes haywire but he doesn't reject it. Instead he grabs Ratchet's frame and frags him hard and wild, places him on the stage. With his groveling voice yells into Ratchet's microphone pick ups that he can't wait when the crew comes in. That after a long shift of picking up bots and patching up frames they would do this again, and next time they will have an audience to perform for.

That was the only time they had. As most of it was being too exhausted with fixing the building. Making sure that it look destroyed from the outside, having to only fix the bottom floors without collapsing the building from the top proved to be difficult. Even with the mechs he saved helping out, many issuses of resources and planning was still too much to worry about.

So Deadlock planned to search again. He spends his last night just sitting next to Ratchet. Telling him not worry, and he will comm every day just to reassure him of his safety. Ratchet gives him his ground bridge. Tells him to come back immediately after he finds something he thinks will help and that he will pick up his calls even if he can't talk back.

That was the last time they speak together, because once Ratchet was properly situated he update Wheeljack of his location.

There's a stain shaped like a human.

That's when he finds Impactor and things spirals out of control. Between Wheeljack taking Optimus Prime here, their entourage raising tempers and talks about Megatron abuse of the Matrix. Ratchet has to leave.

Many of his mechs encourage him to stay. Prime has no power here and if they want his help he should force the Autobots to promise to leave them alone. He doesn't answer them, he knows Wheeljack has betrayed him before. That the army has force his hands, but something tells him complying is the best option.

He turns to Impactor, tells him to tell the bigger bots to take care of the sick. Ratchet knows that mech has turned himself around and regained his spark. So it comes to a surprise that the mech follows behind him. Defending him from Elita-One and even sacrificing his own frame by pulling his comm out.

They violated him and still Impactor smiles at him, stays with him and gives his life for him. He sees his spark give out, but never sees his new found love of life leave his body.

That mankin died. He died the instant he became human. You see humans cannot exist in the vortex world...

As he boards the Arc, Ratchet gets a call from Deadlock. When he reached to answer the distance is to far.

#transformers #transformers siege #transformers war for cybertron #maccadam #ratchet #Seige Ratchet #Deadlock #Siege Deadlock #ratchlock #Ratchlock Day #DRAtchet #dritchet #fanfic #valveplug

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grubloved · 7 months

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hiiiii what's a little joy from your day so far? something carrying you forward?

you asked this on saturday when i juat so happened to be at the ren faire with my beloved all day!!! we had a great time it was so so fun ^_^ one person had SEIGE ENGINES and they were super cool.

#birdenest #asks #I WAS GONNA SEND ASKS TO PEOPLE LIKE U DO BUT THEN i was at the ren fair..

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sea-salted-wolverine · 2 years

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Okay. This is what happened. This is canon, there have been unreliable narrators before and no one can prove me wrong. Tolkien estate can eat my entire ass.

Legolas and Gimli are living life in middle earth until Gimil is ready to pass on and Legolas starts building a boat.

This is the first time the redneck backwoods prince has ever had to fabricate something. He's never crafted a functional object in his entire life and Gimli, from an entire race of fanatical craftsman, watches his elf get into a leaky bathtub and nearly drown in 3 feet of water. In a pond.

Gimli goes, yeah, okay, I guess I can take up another hobby and becomes the first, last, and only dwarven shipwright ever. The boat he makes is the world's first, last, and only Ironside, and it looks like a seige engine. Legolas helps and stands around looking pretty and does a lot of explaining when they show up in Valinor to dock with all the pretty elven sloops in the Khazad-dûm II.

#lotr #legolas #gimli son of gloin #you mean to tell me that legolas built that boat?#legolas was moral support at best #he brought snacks #gimli built the boat #i like the idea that they showed up in a leaky canoe and legolas went hey met my boyfriend #but gimli building a cruiser is funnier

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foone · 1 year

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I had a dream about Sherlock Holmes getting asked to look into a crime by a mysterious anonymous patron, who turned out to be Carmen Sandiego.

See, she was planning a big heist (as always) and wanted him to investigate it. Because along with sending him clues about what she was really doing, she had sent him at least one clue that was false and misleading. Since he didn't know she was his patron, he was "solving" the case incorrectly, and drawing the police attention to the wrong place at the wrong time, which is when she striked.

Her plan involved stealing a subway car from the London underground using some kind of leftover diversion in the track, which had been used in WW2 but since sealed up. She read about it as a little girl, and managed to find it by wandering the tracks looking for cinnamon (I'm not sure exactly what that meant)

So she'd secretly opened it back up, and diverted the car while a train was passing. The car was then used to go to a big museum on the night the Prime Minister was supposed to tour it, but she arrived early and impersonated his security detail, saying they needed to check the museum for bombs as there had been a threat.

With the museum locked down, on of her flunkies was blowtorchiing their way through a central column of the museum. It turned out there was a hidden cache underneath it that she was after... But it was taking too long. There were too many steel barriers, and the prime minister had arrived and wanted in. She stalled for time by shooting one of the museum visitors who had been there when she arrived, a VIP waiting to meet the PM. He was a CEO of a chocolate company, and she shot him on an upper balcony of the museum, letting his body fall to the gathering crowd below, knowing it would cause chaos. It did.

As the vault is finally breached, her mooks turn on her. It seems they were loaned to her by another villain, who had a nefarious motive. He wanted her to organize the heist for her and divert the attentions of Sherlock Holmes, but he wanted the cache for himself. One of her lieutenants reveals to her that he's actually Moriarty, arch-nemesis to Sherlock Holmes!

... Who is arriving now, with the rest of the police and something like a seige engine, to break down the doors. He knows her threats to execute the hostages is a bluff, and her demands are a lie, just stalling for time. She killed that chocolate CEO over a personal vendetta, as he had hoarded chocolate during the blitz, when she was an orphaned child who would have done anything for some sweets.

With the museum doors breached, Moriarty flees into the secret cache. Carmen instead goes to an exhibit on the history of flight, where it turns out she'd snuck into the museum beforehand and replaced one of the exhibits with her own personal plane, which she uses to escape out through the beautiful front window of the museum, shattering it into a billion pieces.

She looks back to see something weird: the gathered crowd isn't watching her escape or angrily shaking off pieces of glass, they're instead looking back at the museum. She's been upstaged, and in a major way.

From the secret cache under the museum rises a NAZI FLYING SAUCER, PILOTED BY MORIARTY! yes, it turns out the secret cache was from a WW2 research lab, examining stolen German prototypes.

Annoyed at having her beautiful heist ruined by the double cross, she flips a tight u-turn and fires missiles at the escaping Nazi flying disc. She came ready for war.

Moriarty returns fire, and Carmen's plane is disabled. She ejects, but on at the last moment. His saucer might survive a missile attack, but it's not going to survive her plane crashing into it at high speed.

Damaged, it tilts at an awkward angle and begins to slowly dive towards the Thames. Moriarty pulls the ejection seat lever, only to find a little post-it know with German writing, reading the equivalent of "not yet implemented, will do later". He swears, and manually opens the cockpit, running across the surface of the ship past smoking fan ducts. He reaches the cargo section, rips it open, and reveals what he actually came for. A complex device, even older than the Nazis, that they had captured during their March across Europe. He grabs some cables and plugs them into a port, and yanks an activation lever. The small device spins up, and a shimmering oval of dancing light appears above it, through which faint scenes of different places around the world can be seen, flickering by too fast to see clearly.

He presses some buttons to try to select a destination, but the airship is getting low. He swears and jumps into the portal just before the ship hits the water, breaking up and tossing burning debris across the shoreline.

He opens his eyes in a round room with polished metal walls. He turns around and there's a surprised man in odd clothing standing behind a.. Lectern? Desk? Some kind of panel.

The man taps an emblem on his chest and Moriarty notes he's an Irishman. "Transporter room 3 to bridge, O'Brien here. Captain, you're going to want to see this."

And then I woke up.

#Dreams #I honestly forgot that Moriarty is also a character in star trek tng during this

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the-shepherd-of-fire · 10 months

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Play the game of ask

Thanks for the tag @another-brick-inthewall and @screamingwombatgirl

1. Are you named after anyone?

I'm not! I have a weird name in my family just because my mum liked it.

2.When was the last time you cried?

Yesterday probably, I cry daily at dumb sad videos. Las time I creid properly was listening to David from Disturbed give a moving speech at Download.

3.Do you have kids?

Nooooo definitely not yet.

4.Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Not as much as I used to.

5.What sports do you play/have played?

I played rugby, football. cricket, tennis, dodgeball and badminton when I was younger, I also swam lots and even rode horses for a lil bit. Nowdays I just swim, hike and wind seige engines.

6.What’s the first thing you noticed about other people?

Tattoos and hair style, both genders, normally gives a good clue of what people are into aha

7.Scary movies or happy endings?

Do love an awful scary movie.

8.Any special talents?

Does crowdsurfing count?

9.Where were you born?

The Midlands of England, at least Metal came from here as well.

10.What are your hobbies?

Listening to music, hiking, badly playing guitars, pub socials, festivals, just started Just Dance again so watch out.

11. Apparently this got lost in reblogs so Im going to post a random song from my 'On Repeat' Playlist

12.Do you have any pets?

I have a cat and a dog but they are techically my mums and live far away so dont see them as much as I want :(

13. How tall are you?

6 foot exactly

14. Favorite subject in school?

History! easily

15. Your dream job?

Fairly close to what I do now, could never see myself in an office

16. Eye color?

Blue :)

I tag @langdonsluxiouslocks @turnleftaticela @weloveachother @the-bearded-bisexual (no preassure) and anyone else that wants to join in

This was a good one thank you <3

#tag game #ask game.#me #Spotify

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wjbminecraft · 9 months

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Things I would add if I was in charge of the Minecraft team:

A Deathmatch mode.

That's it that's the list.

Serious list below.

Biome-layering for Oceans so we can get some funky benthic and abyssopelagic dudes.

More uses for Copper and Bones.

Incendiary Nether-Creepers.

Ambient audio for more biomes (e.g birds chirping in Plains, the wind whistling through the trees in Forests, the chirrups of small, unseen creatures in Lush Caves).

Illager seige-engines.

Driftwood, which is found on beaches after storms and can only be used for making Planks and Doors that are weaker than other wood.

Water-villages.

#mineblr #minecraft

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themilkman897 · 6 months

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Check out this catapult I made with my friends and my dad.

It uses a harrow tine for the spring and a rachet strap to pull back and release the arm. It can and will seriously hurt you if you get in the way of the arm.

The arm started out straight but it bent when we fired it with no stopper cushion

#catapult #fabrication #building #seige engine

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blorbologist · 1 year

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Growing up, if Percy hadn’t been so interested in engineering and metal work and instead, took the path of biological sciences, what kind of character/person do you think he would be? In your mind, how do you think that would affect the story and whatnot?

Heyo! Saw you sent this to @essayofthoughts - hopefully our answers are different enough!

You have no idea what a delight it was to receive this as a biologist myself >:3c

First point: (fantasy) engineering is something that works on a completely different timeframe to (fantasy/early) biology, and with different rewards. Percy can make a seige arrow in a night of unbridled guilt - you can't grow a flower in that time without magic, let alone make an entirely new morph or something. A lot of biology, until fairly recently, was done with knowledge being the reward, the takeaway, which could then be used, while engineering can make, you know. Guns.

Today of course we can make trangsenic strains of all sorts of species, and do tiny surgery on tiny organisms to lesion regions of the brain or inject something in them, but this is likely beyond the abilities in the setting - again, without magic. Biology just works on too long a timeframe... usually.

I think, first of all, that a more nature-inclined Percy would be more patient than we see in canon - again, long timeframes - and with less DEX but more WIS (for observation) and (even more) INT. Still likely fairly introverted before the Briarwoods, but drawing more satisfaction from knowledge than he already does given he can’t really create much. Given his broad interests in canon, I could see him dabbling in all sorts of fields: basic anatomy and neurobiology (I think neurobio would facinate him, but ofc early neurobio is... dubiously ethical at best. Very best. Fuck.), botany (the poison garden was likely fun), ecology and zoology (the Parchwood is right there!), genetics (as a noble family, the de Rolos likely had horses and hounds of quality, maybe falconry birds too - I could see him having an interest in the breeding of domestic species, and livestock and crops too), maybe some basic microbio (maybe he invents a microscope? If we wanna give him a potential avenue to be a Gunslinger like canon - use microscopy + biochem as the stepping stone to guns).

Next big question, of course, is: if Orthax can't inspire him to produce guns, assuming we don't just use 'Percy invents the microscope which gives him the experience Orthax needs to produce firearms'... what tool of vengeance will Percy use?

My first thought is bioweapons. Weaponize some new pathogen - to which he also produces the vaccine, but no cure because this is *vengeance.* Maybe this Percy is still a Fighter - focused on swords instead, getting right into the fray to unleash the toxin near enemies and stab it into their flesh methodically. Or maybe an Artificer, with things reflavored to be based more in science than a touch of magic. Or Orthax compensates for the lack of guns by making him a Warlock (maybe Percy tries to delude himself his powers are all perfectly non-magical, but... he's not stupid.)

I think it would be very difficult for Vox Machina to sympathize with this Percy. Sure, the guns are terrible, but they're very practical and usually kill quickly enough. They're cool. Bandits dying, frothing at the mouth, as some preternatural poison eats up their nerves... that would be way less easy to justify. Keyleth especially would likely struggle with it, despite getting along with Percy more otherwise. Vex might be a little freaked by it, too, though with Vox Machina and Trinket (and any really trusted allies) vaccinated against it friendly fire shouldn't be possible. How would Vex feel about poisoned arrows, I wonder? How would Percy poke at Fenthras, lighting up with ideas? Would he combine his tallents with the girls' to devastating effect? Use this species for brambleshot, the spines are actually glass. Dragons are reptiles - they usually can't breath and run at the same time, use this to set a trap.

Part of his crawl out of vengeance during/after the Briarwoods arc would likely involve making a cure for his bioweapon. Because though no one can directly reproduce his weapon here, it can spread naturally - through immune individuals or asymptomatic carriers. Hell, probably spreads more quickly than the guns, if the pathogen acts quickly enough to be used in combat.

Of course, I'm die-hard Perc'ahlia, so I can't help but wonder how their dynamic would be impacted. I think they would both still grow close - Percy isn't in sniper's roosts with her anymore, but they can bond over their love of the natural world. This Percy would be absolutely fascinated by Trinket - how the ranger bond and adventuring impacts his behavior, how Vex trained him, etc. which would certainly endear him to her despite the whole 'weaponized virus or whatever' deal. Maybe he loves the Sun Tree, too, used to (pathetically) climb into it as a child despite the protests of the religious because he wanted to know and learn and he shows Vex his initials he carved before he knew it bad to scar a tree like that. Maybe they take time to point out interesting plants or tracks or critters to eachother. Maybe Percy's Nat 20 in the Saundor fight fires something terrible for trees right into the fucker, and for all his curiosity he encourages Keyleth to burn all that remains to the ground. Maybe Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt means even more, because he had wanted that title for himself when he was young - that's what he was going to be, before, and he’s giving it to her instead.

Tldr; I think a bio-oriented Percy would be fundamentally different to our engineering Percy, due to the rewards and reward timeframe offered by this area of interest. He would also be a far harder character to sympathize with, given the special kind of awful of bioweapons. Like a terrible, angsty Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin crossover.

#campaign 1 #critical role #percival de rolo #cr percy #cr au #ask #i just request that if you use this long ramble as the basis for an au or a fic that you Ask First and credit appropriately please ;;#percahlia #perc'ahlia

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xxxjarchiexxx · 5 months

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"A Google employee protesting the tech giant’s business with the Israeli government was questioned by Google’s human resources department over allegations that he endorsed terrorism, The Intercept has learned. The employee said he was the only Muslim and Middle Easterner who circulated the letter and also the only one who was confronted by HR about it.

The employee was objecting to Project Nimbus, Google’s controversial $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and its military to provide state-of-the-art cloud computing and machine learning tools.

Since its announcement two years ago, Project Nimbus has drawn widespread criticism both inside and outside Google, spurring employee-led protests and warnings from human rights groups and surveillance experts that it could bolster state repression of Palestinians.

Mohammad Khatami, a Google software engineer, sent an email to two internal listservs on October 18 saying Project Nimbus was implicated in human rights abuses against Palestinians — abuses that fit a 75-year pattern that had brought the conflict to the October 7 Hamas massacre of some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians. The letter, distributed internally by anti-Nimbus Google workers through company email lists, went on to say that Google could become “complicit in what history will remember as a genocide.”

“Strangely enough, I was the only one of us who was sent to HR over people saying I was supporting terrorism or justifying terrorism.”

Twelve days later, Google HR told Khatami they were scheduling a meeting with him, during which he says he was questioned about whether the letter was “justifying the terrorism on October 7th.”

In an interview, Khatami told The Intercept he was not only disturbed by what he considers an attempt by Google to stifle dissent on Nimbus, but also believes he was left feeling singled out because of his religion and ethnicity. The letter was drafted and internally circulated by a group of anti-Nimbus Google employees, but none of them other than Khatami were called by HR, according to Khatami and Josh Marxen, another anti-Nimbus organizer at Google who helped spread the letter. Though he declined to comment on the outcome of the HR meeting, Khatami said it left him shaken.

“It was very emotionally taxing,” Khatami said. “I was crying by the end of it.”

“I’m the only Muslim or Middle Eastern organizer who sent out that email,” he told The Intercept. “Strangely enough, I was the only one of us who was sent to HR over people saying I was supporting terrorism or justifying terrorism.”

The Intercept reviewed a virtually identical email sent by Marxen, also on October 18. Though there are a few small changes — Marxen’s email refers to “a seige [sic] upon all of Gaza” whereas Khamati’s cites “the complete destitution of Gaza” — both contain verbatim language connecting the October 7 attack to Israel’s past treatment of Palestinians.

Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini told The Intercept, “We follow up on every concern raised, and in this case, dozens of employees reported this individual’s email – not the sharing of the petition itself – for including language that did not follow our workplace policies.” Mencini declined to say which workplace policies Khatami’s email allegedly violated, whether other organizers had gotten HR calls, or if any other company personnel had been approached by Employee Relations for comments made about the war.

The incident comes just one year after former Google employee Ariel Koren said the company attempted to force her to relocate to Brazil in retaliation for her early anti-Nimbus organizing. Koren later quit in protest and remains active in advocating against the contract. Project Nimbus, despite the dissent, remains in place, in part because of contractual terms put in place by Israel forbidding Google from cutting off service in response to political pressure or boycott campaigns."

#free palestine

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