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shadowkat678 · 2 years

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Yo! Send me asks about my d&d characters. As many questions as you want the more the better.

I'm bored. I promise I'll answer this time we're getting into hyper fixation territory.

My characters so far you can ask about!

1. Jin

This is my swashbuckler changeling who likes to pretend they don't have crippling issues that need therapy. Them (or at least the form that Jin grew up embodying) and their sister, Elza, are also my profile pic! Speaking of, Jin recently got back their sister, who was very dead which Jin had a lot of self blame for, after making a stream of mistakes to get there. Also, their brother hates them. The three are triplets technically but Jin was switched at birth, in more traditional changeling fashion. Feeling So Much™️. Non-binary disaster.

Jin really just wants a break but despite apparently gaining the favor of a luck goddess, who knows when they'll actually get a real break. Because oh look, on top of personal issues, we also gotta deal with cults! Fun! We did get to hijack an airship in the process of rescuing their sister though, so that was fun. Also the Wish spell used to bring her back to life MAY have affected the timeline in very important ways???????? Oops?

Jin may have managed to get my favorite forgotten realms npc as his enemy. Jarlaxle, secret ruler of Luskan and my top favorite pirate drow, is probably going to be after their ass. Yep. It was HIS airship! :D

Feel like karma is getting me back for all the shit I've pulled dming with Jarlaxle against my players. Welp.

2. Sabel

My drow primordial warlock. Her home was overtaken by an evil lich hellbent on ruling the Underdark. Her dad disappeared a few years before and possibly is involved in a resistance movement? She was also tricked into giving up information critical in said conquest by her uncle, so she ran off into the Underdark, almost died, and was saved by her patron who she still has no clue what their deal is. Now also part of resistance and is roaming the surface looking for allies and experiencing extreme culture shock every ten minutes or so. Also very gay but currently still too preoccupied with PTSD and the lich taking over her home for relationships.

Anxious. About everything. All the time. Her familiar Mojo doubles as a therapy animal who rides on her shoulder as a fire salamander. She has gone into hyperventilation twice so far so I mean not doing as bad as she could be. Number might get higher. Considering those times involved seeing a friend die and the city the party had been sheltering getting OVERRUN BY DEMONS...I mean, hyperventilating is a fair reaction to that I think.

She is also the group mom friend and is the only character I've ever played who's actually trustful of authority, and as someone who absolutely not, the trouble she gets into due to this trait and being a naive neutral good goody two shoes is MADDENING.

3. Dalora

A Dhampire monk with a dip in rogue for cunning action. She was dealing in some shady side gigs while apprenticed to her guild. This ended in a not so fun neck biting encounter that she's still surprised to have woken up from, abit with...a significantly lower heart rate and no longer needing to breathe.

She's now taken up mercenary work, along with modeling on the side for her girlfriend Melody, a tiefling bard who is tired of Dolora racing in with blood all over her shirts. Think Josephine from Dragon Age Inquisition and you have Melody's entire aesthetic.

She wants to move past her early life choices, but the bastard who bit her MAY have found out she lived and MAY not be happy about it. Not currently playing her, but I really, really, really want to if nothing else than for the antics with her girlfriend, who of course gives Dolora all her clothing. I need art and a full romcom for these two CN lesbian disasters stat.

4. Lorana

Next, the tiefling old ones warlock who is discovering why her dad was so deadset on her staying home and safe. AKA, the world be shitty sometimes, especially when you're in a minority group people often don't always like. Sadly, her dad has disappeared, and she's stuck working everything out with just her, the party, and an annoying Sprite named Callum who won't stop being sarcastically critical about anything and everything.

She got her powers when she found a Magician terrot card baring her likeness, and now EVERYTHING is WEIRD. Also no matter how often she throws the card away, it keeps showing up back in her bag. She also has super unsettling dreams sometimes.

This was my first serious character and sadly the games I put her in all ended super soon so I never got very far with her. I still love her concept and want to use her again one day, but at this point I'm worried she's just cursed.

5. Riana, prefers to be called Rini.

Last but not least, my punk rock aasimar trickster cleric. Her mom and uncle kept fighting over custody to use her aasimar rep for their own ends, so she scammed them both and ran off. Sadly, both are very influential people, and are not happy with getting tricked by a rebellious teenager. It's cool though because she found some friends that are letting her hang with them low key, and occasionally they go get in bar brawls, which are great bonding experiences. She just got her first piercing and her spiritual weapon is a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat.

I also haven't played her yet but when I do it'll probably be on the cusp of her mom finding where she's been and she needs to GTFO pronto. Very bubbly and enthusiastic, but also no I'm not telling you about my background so stop asking and let's just wreck something. Also she has a guardian angel that's only minimally going along with the antics but also does agree with getting out of the toxic environment. He's just not sure if he approves too much more of her new activities. She thinks he needs to get the stick out his ass.

Very split on the topic of being religious, despite being a cleric, and kinda just wants to have a good time and not go back to being used in her family.

And those are my current five d&d characters, sadly only two in current use. Though I think about all of them constantly.

#dungeons and dragons #d&d #ocs

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grailfinders · 3 years

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Fate and Phantasms #81: Jekyll and Hyde

As we get closer to Thanksgiving, it’s important that we all take a moment and think about what we’re thankful for. Despite this year, I’m thankful I don’t have an alternate personality that wants to kill everyone around me. Jekyll & Hyde will have to think of something else.

Their build’s breakdown is under the cut, or you can check out their character sheet over here!

Next up: Bodybuilding gone wrong! (or right, depending on your point of view.)

Race and Background

Jekyll is a Human, giving him +1 in all ability scores. He’s also the textbook definition of a Haunted One, giving him Arcana and Investigation proficiencies as well as severe trauma.

Ability Scores

Your highest stat will be your Intelligence- you’re smart, if a bit reckless when choosing test subjects. Your Strength comes second, you may be a Victorian Englishman, but half of you is a serial killer, that has to count for something. Third is Dexterity- both versions of you are good with a knife, and you only want your other half dead, so your AC shouldn’t be too low. You’re repressed as hell, but the other half of your is terrifying, so that averages out your Charisma a bit. Your Constitution’s not too great- again, you’re a Victorian Englishman. Finally, dump Wisdom. One half of you tested chemicals on yourself, the other’s a berserker, it’s just not your strong suit.

Class Levels

1. Rogue 1: Jekyll’s an assassin in FGO, and a rogue here. He would be a good fit for a certain hunter of blood subclass, but I like to save the non-canon or technically rule-breaking bits for joke levels, so they can be easily taken out if needed- I’m not building half a character as a blood hunter.

When you pick the class, you get proficiency in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as four skills- Acrobatics and Stealth go to Jekyll, and Deception and Intimidation for Hyde. On top of all those proficiencies, you can double up on that with Expertise in two skills. Let’s buff up Arcana so you can learn how to make that potion already and Deception so no one knows when you’re the other you. You also get a Thieves’ Cant to help you talk to other rogues, and a Sneak Attack which you can use if you have advantage with a finesse weapon, or there’s another ally within 5′ of the target.

2. Barbarian 1: After you get some of that good murder juice, you also become a barbarian. You can go into a Rage, getting advantage on Strength saves and checks, extra damage on strength based attacks, and resistance to physical damage types. Also good to note: sneak attack only requires a finesse weapon- you don’t have to use dexterity on the attacks, so you can rage and sneak at the same time. You also get an Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC based on your Dexterity and Constitution When not wearing armor. It’s not any better than your normal AC, but we’ll work on that.

3. Rogue 2: Second level rogues can make Cunning Actions, letting you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. You’re not one for fighting, until you suddenly are.

4. Barbarian 2: At this level, Hyde can make Reckless Attacks, getting advantage on all attacks this turn in exchange for enemies having advantage on him until his next turn. He also gets a Danger Sense, giving him advantage on dexterity saves from effects he can see.

5. Rogue 3: We’re making Jekyll a Swashbuckler rogue this level. It’s admittedly a strange subclass, but you could say this is part of Hyde’s intimidation tactics leaking into your normal way of doing things. When you take the subclass, you gain Fancy Footwork, preventing creatures you attack from making opportunity attacks against you for the turn. You also have Rakish Audacity, adding your charisma modifier to initiative rolls. You can also use your sneak attack if you and your target are the only creatures within 5′ of each other. Speaking of your sneak attack, it increases to 2d6 at this level.

6. Barbarian 3: At this level Hyde becomes a Berserker. I mean, he was one already, but now he’s one in D&D too. This lets him go into a Frenzy when he rages, letting him make a weapon attack as a bonus action at the cost of gaining a level of exhaustion after the frenzy ends. Thankfully Frenzy is optional, and you probably shouldn’t use it.

7. Rogue 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to become an Actor, increasing your Charisma by one and getting advantage on Deception checks to pose as your other self. You can also mimic other creatures you’ve heard for at least a minute requiring an insight check contested against you deception to see through it.

8. Barbarian 4: Use your next ASI to round out your Strength and Constitution scores for better brawling.

9. Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues can make an Uncanny Dodge as a reaction, halving incoming damage from one attack. Combine this with your rage resistances, and you can eat up a lot of damage. Also, your sneak attack deals 3d6 this level.

10. Barbarian 5: Fifth level barbarians get an Extra Attack with each attack action, letting you make two attacks per turn (or three if you really want to w/ Frenzy). You also get Fast Movement, giving you an extra 10′ of movement speed.

11. Rogue 6: At sixth level, rogues get another round of Expertise. Pick Intimidation for Hyde, and Stealth for Jekyll.

12. Barbarian 6: Sixth level berserkers can go into a Mindless Rage, preventing you from being charmed or frightened for the duration of your rages. If you’re charmed when going into a rage, you’ll still be charmed when you come out. Be careful though, just because Hyde isn’t charmed doesn’t mean he won’t stab you.

13. Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues learn Evasion, so you take half damage on failed dex saves, and no damage on successes. When combined with your proficiency, Danger Sense, and good dex score, fireballs won’t be an issue for you. Also, you deal 4d6 when you sneak attack.

14. Barbarian 7: Seventh level barbarians have a Feral Instinct that gives you advantage on initiative rolls, and you can ignore being surprised by raging. Hyde’s always waiting for a chance to break free, and a good shock might be enough to do it.

15. Rogue 8: Use this ASI for more Strength, giving you stronger and more accurate attacks.

16. Barbarian 8: Also bump up your Dexterity with your next ASI for a better AC and stealth.

17. Rogue 9: Ninth level swashbucklers get Panache, letting you make a Persuasion check against a creature’s Insight check to either make you the focus of their fighting or charm them for a minute. It’s unfortunate that you can’t use Intimidation for this instead, but that’s for homebrew to decide. Also, your sneak attack goes up to 5d6.

18. Barbarian 9: Ninth level barbarians get a Brutal Critical, letting you add an extra die to critical hits. That’s not much for you, considering you’re already throwing 10d6 onto your crits, but every bit helps.

19. Rogue 10: Use your last ASI to bump up your Constitution for more health and a better AC.

20. Barbarian 10: Your capstone level nets you the berserker feature Intimidating Presence, letting you frighten a creature as an action. If it fails a wisdom save based on your charisma, it’s frightened until the end of your next turn. However, you can use your action each turn to extend the effect without needing another saving throw.

Pros:

Unless you’re super into RP (or into playing half-level characters), you’re not going to be playing Jekyll or Hyde completely separate from each other. And that’s great, because Barbarians and Rogues mix very well. Rages and Danger Sense mix with Uncanny Dodges Evasion, respectively, to make you very hard to damage, even when your AC makes you easier to hit than a standard tank. Plus, barbarians love to deal crits, and rogues love it too, so you’ll be dealing tons of damage thanks to Sneak Attacks mixed with Extra and Reckless Attacks

You’re an expert in impersonation and stealth, so you’re great at getting the drop on people, a useful skill for serial killers.

Combining Fast Movement with Fancy Footwork and Uncanny Actions can make you very mobile on the battlefield, dealing damage while keeping yourself in a good position.

Cons:

The way we set up this build isn’t the most graceful way to level up a character, shoving all your ASIs into the same general area means you’ll be weaker than the rest of the party in the levels immediately before them. Also, you’re waiting until level 5 just to get your subclass features.

Your Low Wisdom means you’re very easy to charm and fool. Your rages can keep you from fighting the rest of the party (more than usual), but they can’t help against illusions.

Your main source of damage is still a regular Dagger, so flying enemies or ones that resist nonmagical damage can be a pain. But you’re just as much of a pain to kill, so it’s only fair.

#D&D 5e #Fate Grand Order #FGO #Jekyll and Hyde #Fate and Phantasms

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strahd-von-asthmavich · 3 years

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The Dread Lands of Ravenloft - Mod Van Richten’s New England In-Table Campaign [Session 6]

Session Highlights

Did you know that this is technically the party’s third official combat? We’re a pretty role-play heavy group.

They’ve angered six very hungry vampire spawn last time! During the lead-up to this session, my players were so scared of TPK. But, spoiler alert, I’m not that cruel. I planned this out to a T!

Side Note: Any art that I share of NPCs within these highlight posts is my (Mod Van Richten’s) original and fan art. Any art that I use for my players that wasn’t created by myself but by other artists is kept private and within our friend circle.

Abrascus Barbarian (4) Path of the Ancestral Guardian Race: Tortle Background: Haunted One

Direthorn Rogue (4) Swashbuckler Race: Drow Background: Urchin

Flopsy Barbarian (4) Path of Wild Magic Race: Rabbit Man Background: Experiment

Mangus Monk (4) Way of the Open Hand Race: Half Elf Background: Urchin

Neracahne Wizard (4) School of Evocation Race: Eladrin Background: Noble

Nyra Rogue (4) Phantom Race: Fairy Background: Noble

CW: decapitation, sensual themes, gender dysphoria

Let’s see how the battle went under the cut!

I made a grave error when writing session 5's recap. I missed a lot of details! Good thing my players don't read these bc they would laugh at me for missing this!

Nyra made two discoveries during the day. While inside the Blue Water Inn, she notices something while Ismark is flirting with Rudy. There's a spirit hovering near the half elf. He looks like a young human boy, and he seems slightly surprised when Nyra suddenly tries to talk to him aloud. After the spirit fades, she hears a voice telepathically:

"I wonder if she can't hear me either."

At the dinner, Nyra can't help but notice the same phenomena again. Instead, she sees multiple tortured spirits around the dinner table and throughout the mansion. It appears that they're all in agony.

The session begins back on Direthorn, who was away from the other adventurers most of the day. They’ve been trying to scavenge for where they can find more pie, without realizing that Flopsy still had pie left despite not being addicted anymore. They’ve gone through garbage cans and different alleyways in vain, scaring townspeople all the while with feral noises.

They’d been so caught up in trying to find pie that they’d completely forgotten about the Baron’s dinner. The only thing that snaps them out of it is Vasili, who catches them scavenging through garbage in the noble district. He snaps them out of it by asking where their friends are. They have no idea, for they weren’t with all of them when they went to the coffin shop earlier that day. Shortly after the conversation starts, however, Adelaide rushes out of the manor and comes up to Vasili to exclaim her worries. She was worried about Escher, but she was also able to tell Vasili and Direthorn where they were. With that, they head straight to the shop.

By the time that the official combat begins, Direthorn, Vasili, and Adelaide are at the entrance. Here are some very notable highlights:

(A/N: Nyra’s player wasn’t able to play for the encounter, but she allowed me to use Nyra’s stats to run her on autopilot during the fight. Unfortunately, I had shit dice rolls)

We had two critical hits: One from Mangus and the other from Abrascus.

Vasili was able to very quickly join the fight, and he had a very powerful rapier. Its blade was pure black, and a lot of its damage was necrotic.

This is the first time that Adelaide shows off her spellcasting to her new friends, but unfortunately it’s not as effective as she’d want it to be.

Izek and four guards arrive at the scene a couple rounds into the fight to help.

Mangus got the first kill of the fight.

Flopsy dealt the most damage in the fight.

Direthorn spent most of the fight antagonizing one vampire spawn in the back corner of the shop. They have spiderclimbing ability and were able to climb up to the window right above the door. Afterwards, they proceeded to mess with this one spawn until it got bored of them (aka: Izek hit them with his hurl flame ability)

We had four critical failures:

Vasili accidentally stabbed Flopsy with his ridiculously powerful rapier.

Mangus lost his quarterstaff by throwing it across the room.

Nyra accidentally pierced Neracahne with one of her arrows.

Abrascus accidentally strikes Adelaide with his greataxe, which leads to major consequences.

After Abrascus hits Adelaide with his greataxe, she looks so angry as she tries to cast a spell on him with little success. However, Escher also saw what happened, and he then cast the same spell on Abrascus, which did success. Abrascus ended up going unconscious because of seeing horrific images.

After the fight was over, Henrik was under arrest. Henrik was terrified and constantly tried to say that he was innocent and was framed. Izek did let the party briefly talk to him, but that ended up being inconclusive. Henrik said he couldn’t say the name of the person that made him do it. Aloud, Flopsy simply said, “It was daddy,” which made everyone very uncomfortable. Again. Henrik was crying out that he was innocent as he was being dragged out of the shop. Vasili left shortly after.

Because the investigation was a success, the adventurers are all considered “guests of honor” during the Festival of the Blazing Sun. What this means for them is that food expenses are all paid for during the festival, and they’re allowed to spend the festival with the baron at his table whenever they wish to.

Ismark arrived with Rudy during the aftermath. One of the vampire spawn was burnt to a crisp by Izek, and Rudy proceeded to decapitate the body. After this, Rudy looked at everyone in confusion, claiming that they needed to decapitate the corpses and then burn the bodies in order for them to die. Flopsy looked confused and told him about how he killed Doru. Even though Doru’s head was bashed in, Rudy tells Flopsy that because he wasn’t decapitated, then he’s technically still active and can eventually regenerate from that.

Rudy is dumbfounded by the party’s lack of knowledge, until he realizes that they’re not really from here. He explains to them that because Barovia is run by a vampire, then vampires that live here are stronger than vampires that would typically be found in the Material Plane. So, it takes more effort to kill them. However, after seeing that Flopsy has Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires, he seems really disappointed that he doesn’t know more about vampires. That is, until he’s given the book and sees that many pages on how to kill vampires are missing. Flopsy tells him that he’d gotten the book like this from Vasili.

When Abrascus wakes up, he’s suffering from an effect of longterm madness, experiencing tremors and feeling shaken up. Rudy quickly takes care of it before it gets too out of hand, and he and Ismark work together to heal the adventurers. When Rudy does this, he holds onto his pan flute while Ismark plays his balalaika to cast his healing spells.

More Content Warnings: Misgendering, trans pregnancy mentioned

Before resting…

Abrascus ended up staying behind at the coffin shop to sleep in one of the coffins. Rudy took exception to this, and he told Flopsy to place a holy symbol on top of the coffin. Just in case. Ismark stays the night with Rudy when they all part ways.

When the rest of the adventurers return to the manor, Flopsy goes inside and can hear Adelaide crying while Escher is tending to the wound caused by Abrascus’ greataxe. She’s devastated that someone she thought was her friend would hurt her like that. Escher tries to assure that things like that happen sometimes, but he will do anything to defend her. Adelaide then asks him, “Is Father going to do something to him?” His answer to her is to not worry about that, for that’s his business.

Flopsy soon makes his presence known, or rather, Escher begins to notice him. He stops talking with Adelaide, and she decides to go see what the girls are up to at the guest house. This leaves Flopsy to continue the conversation he had with Escher earlier that day.

Flopsy insists that Escher needs to tell him who his host was so that he could become a vampire too. Escher refuses to give the name, for it’s too dangerous, but Flopsy can conclude that Strahd is Escher’s host. To challenge that, Flopsy asks, “What if I ask her other dad?” That makes Escher go from deflective to immediate defensive, now that he knows how much Flopsy heard. It’s then that he tells Flopsy that Adelaide having two fathers was supposed to be kept a secret. Escher is transgender, and he left his old life to escape a forced marriage. How that led to him being in Barovia and being one of Strahd’s consorts is unknown.

Escher makes a promise to Flopsy. If he were to tell anyone that Escher was a vampire and that Adelaide is a dhampir, he would know that it was Flopsy that did it. Essentially, he was going to kill him if he told.

Direthorn, Nyra, and Neracahne all go back to the guest house when everything was cleaned up. Some time later is when Adelaide comes over to see them for comfort. They all decide to have a girls’ night where they drink wine and get to know each other. Adelaide quickly starts getting tipsy, and Neracahne and Direthorn immediately pounce on that as a way to get information out of her. They ask her about her papa, and she tells them that he had raised her mostly on his own and that she’s her favorite person. They then ask about her mom. She seems confused, and after some explaining, she tells them, “I don’t have a mom.” They ask if she’s adopted, but that also needs to be explained to her. She says no, and then she explains how Escher came out to her when she was a child.

Even though Escher had said that her body is similar to hers, that doesn’t change the fact that he is a man. Even if he gave birth to her, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s her father. She’s very adamant about that, but she’s relieved that Neracahne and Direthorn respect that. The conversation gets a little more personal when they start asking about who her other dad is. They’d noticed that when she laughed, Adelaide had fangs. She gets scared when trying to explain herself, and it eventually comes out that her other father is Strahd.

When Escher came to Barovia, he was with his party of adventurers in Vallaki. The way that Adelaide described their union was that it was… not exactly a conventional one. But in the end, they’d “married,” but before Escher could be turned, they found out that he was pregnant with Adelaide. They had to wait until after she was born, or else risk her dying in the process. Escher had almost died when she was born, but Adelaide perceives that her papa turning into a vampire saved him. She also tells them that although Strahd hasn’t really been in her life during her childhood, she knows that he cares about her.

She begs them not to tell and makes them promise. Even though they promised her that they wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, Adelaide knows that people will kill her if they find out. They will also kill Escher, and even though it seems like she knows a lot of people hate Strahd, she doesn’t want him to get killed, either. She soon relaxes once she’s reassured, and they’re all able to open up about their personal lives and experiences.

Direthorn talks about being orphaned and running away from the orphanage at thirteen. They’d been alone for the longest time, after they’d lost their best friend. That makes Adelaide feel a little sad as she expresses her sympathy. Neracahne then talks about how she ran away from an arranged marriage. As she’s explaining her story, Adelaide perks up. She exclaims, “That sounds a lot like my papa!”

She then tells Escher’s story to them, or at least, what she knows of it. Escher was a student at a wizarding school before he came out, and he excelled in his studies. Something happened, however, that made him earn his teachers’ ire. He had crafted his very own spell, which was the spell demonstrated at the coffin shop against Abrascus. In response, the teachers lambasted him and told him to stick to his studies. Escher was angered by this and felt like he was being held back.

That story felt so familiar to Neracahne. She’s heard something similar to this in the past.

Adelaide continues the story. After Escher dropped out of school and took up apprenticeship with a necromancer, he started his transition. It was shortly after this that Escher was forced into a marriage. She didn’t quite remember the name of his husband. “...Reginald?” It was their wedding night that Escher used his spell against someone for the very first time. After his husband was knocked unconscious, Escher escaped and became an adventurer.

Now this was too familiar to Neracahne. It’s then that she remembers a story that she overheard when walking through town one day. That person’s name wasn’t Reginald. It was Roland, who was a middle-aged elf that was a well-respected noble. He’d just stepped out of a chapel holding his head. Different people asked what happened to him, and he started talking about his wedding that was roughly a week earlier. He took a young wife and thought that the union was a success. But then, “that crazy bitch stabbed me in the shoulder,” and she then had cast a spell on him that made him go crazy. She then disappeared without a trace.

It’s then that recognition spread across Neracahne’s face. She realizes in that moment that her old friend is Escher.

After the revelation, the night between the girls continues as normal until they all fall asleep together.

There’s one unfortunate problem that night. Mangus was left alone to wander. He didn’t know where to meet everyone, so he ended up in the dark manor while everyone else was at the guest house. Not a single light was on inside the manor, except for in the closed off study. He checks the door and sees that it’s locked, annoyed that he didn’t have any thieves’ tools on him to try and break in. He doesn’t dwell on that thought for long. When he realizes that whoever’s in there is coming out, he hurries to hide so that he’s not noticed.

From his hiding spot, he can hear Vasili walking out of the study, lightly beating something against his hand. He didn’t see what it was, but it was something with a bit of weight to it. Mangus then hears Vasili go back into the room and douse the fire before leaving it with the door locked shut behind him. In the pitch black manor, Mangus hears Vasili walk up the stairs. Mangus tries to go back towards the study to check the door, but in the process, he hears Vasili call, “I know you’re down there.”

Vasili then walks down the stairs in the pitch black manor, appearing to navigate fine despite being a human. Mangus is a little perplexed and tells him that he was trying to find the others, to which Vasili laughs and tells him that he’s in the completely wrong build. But Vasili does offer to take him back to the guest house.

On the way there, Vasili engages in small talk with Mangus in the dark. He asks about Adelaide, but Mangus can’t seem to get his words out. During his fumbling, Vasili asks Mangus to look at him. It’s here that suddenly Mangus finds himself to be charmed. He sees Vasili as a trusted friend to be protected. He can tell him anything, so he does. He’s able to get his words out that he’s interested in Adelaide in a romantic sense, but he’s still trying to process his feelings. It’s what Vasili says that causes the air around them to still.

“You better be careful with that. You do not want to get on Escher’s bad side. Or mine.”

It’s then that Mangus let’s Vasili bite him, revealing himself to be a vampire. After a considerable amount of damage, he says this to Mangus:

“You will not speak of what happened here, you will not tell anyone I spoke with you, and, if I can help it, you will not remember what happened here.”

Flopsy soon comes to the door to the guest house after they’re done, and Vasili briefly engages in pleasantries before going back to the manor. Flopsy drags Mangus into bed to sleep, and from the other room it sounds a little bit awkward. But the session ends there, as the adventurers take their rest.

#curse of strahd #curseofstrahd #curse of strahd campaign #ravenloft #ravenloft 5e #ravenloft campaign #dungeons and dragons #dungeonsanddragons #dungeons and dragons campaign #dnd campaign #mod van richten #dread lands of ravenloft

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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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How not to Write a Campaign

I have been playing RPGs for a very long time. Back in the day, I avoided any and all pre-written adventures of any sort because my limited experience with them was... just frankly terrible. Weird inconsistencies in tone, unfair encounter setups, too many assumptions about PCs’ motives and actions, etc. Then much later I discovered a group of writers who actually got it, wrote things perfectly in line with how my friends like a game to go, and we’ve been all in on those for a decade and change. But I just finished running a ROUGH one, and I want something good to come of it.

I don’t want to make this a specific review, because... I’m in the industry, I know the people who wrote this campaign, I can guess at some of the problems involved, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or reputation, so let me just refer to the offending prewritten campaign here as the Amnesia Campaign. It’s for a big fantasy RPG, it riffs of a particular author’s work, you can probably guess what it is from that, but, I’m trying.

The first problem I need to bring up with the Amnesia Campaign is that it just commits the cardinal sin of long term RPG campaign writing- The mustache-twirling villain who always manages to escape from the PCs at the last minute. I cannot convey just how important it is that you never, ever do this. The worst sort of example is when you plan around the PCs actually confronting your villain multiple times, and failing to kill them, which is a terrible idea because there really is no way to ever stack the deck and account for every contingency to make an unwinnable fight, or even one where escape is always possible, and especially if you’re publishing adventures, some number of groups will kill the villain too early, either shorting things out or forcing a handwave to keep an ineffectual villain in play and pretend they’re still a threat.

The Amnesia Campaign doesn’t quite go there. Having an actual chance to go toe to toe with the villain is reserved for the very end, but it does use another variant, where no matter what happens, the PCs arrive just after the villain they’re chasing has left. Now... there’s a way you can make that work. If you have a villain who cannot be reached in practical fashion, and can launch attacks anywhere within a huge region, you can build a whole campaign out of characters reacting to the aftermath of evil actions they could not be expected to even learn about until the villain has left the scene. Here, meanwhile, we have a villain with a big elaborate plot that requires traveling all over the world gathering things, based on research he does at the very start which the PCs can, and indeed are expected to do, quickly pick up on these research notes, and basically know everything the villain plans to do from nearly the start of a very long campaign. And... frankly, the villain has no real edge to keep him believably one step ahead. He is a mildly wealthy man hiring goons, mundane forms of transportation, and having to negotiate and fight his way through to various sub-objectives needed for his plan, and it is at least strongly implied that he doesn’t have a lot of lead time. When presented with a scenario about someone needing to be chased down and stopped, PCs can pretty reliably be counted on to constantly be rushing forward, coming up with clever ways to accomplish what they need to in less time, and cut down if not completely nullify their travel time. But, like with battles the villain somehow keeps escaping from, I am forced to continuously state to my players in running this that no, somehow even after avoiding this whole side quest by reading the mind of the person with important information, and directly teleporting to where the villain left for by riverboat, he somehow beat them there, and once again, just left. It’s frustrating, and implausible. We end up with a villain who seems overwhelmingly outmatched, but keeps succeeding because... well, he has plot armor so we’re railroading this.

Admittedly, having a good villain when writing a full campaign in advance can be tricky. The safe and tested formula is generally to start off with minions of your main villain, starting with some who don’t even know who they’re ultimately working for, gradually build up to who’s calling the shots and to what end, have a big side trip to prepare for the final confrontation not directly involving the villains, than cap it with a big showdown. If the PCs know who the main villain is from the very start and where to find them, it becomes hard to rationalize anything between. Sometimes you can pull it off if they’re leading an army or ruling a country, but even then, you want to work up a food chain to them.

A similar problem, which crops up a bit towards the end of the Amnesia Campaign, is making too many assumptions about how the PCs react, and who they befriend. In RPG writing, you need to make as few assumptions as possible about the specifics of what the PCs will do in any situation. You can count on the real broad strokes. The party will investigate the situation described in the adventure, they’ll explore the area, find the villains, fight them, win, learn something to keep the larger plot growing, but that’s it. You can’t assume they’re going to team up with this NPC, enter this room from that direction, or otherwise reenact what you’d imagine you’d do in their place, or what happened in your test play of your adventure. This is particularly important when you include a little sidequest unconnected to their primary goal, or you’re presenting an open-ended investigation.

Ideally, you just have a sensible location, have some villains in it with clear goals and personalities laid out, and you scatter around some things to enable various clever tricks if players think to try them, without mandating any of them. Mention where windows are, and chandeliers, and holes just too small for the average human to fit through, but don’t, as part of the Amnesia Campaign does, invest heavily in the assumption that the PCs will start investigating a sewer system when investigating how a cult gets around a city and go sparse on other possible clues. Also don’t waste adventure background note space on thousands of years of history at the expense of what the actual current problem in the area is and who or what is behind it.

The next problem is one that, were I the average consumer just buying this book would bother me a hell of a lot more than it does as someone who knows how the sausage gets made. Put mildly... you do not want to play a rogue in the Amnesia Campaign. Nor do you want to play a swashbuckler, a critical-hit focused character of any stripe, really any class out of the... roughly 25% of all classes who rely on knowledge of where to make a hit count the most to do the full amount of damage with their attacks, because practically everything is immune.

Now, again. I partly understand how this happens. We have several different authors writing different chapters of the campaign, simultaneously, in pretty unforgiving crunchy conditions, with just a rough outline to go off. Nobody really has a chance to confirm notes and say “hey, did your chapter totally invalidate one of the foundational character archetypes, because I was thinking of doing that and having two of those back to back would be a bit much.” And while the publisher of the Amnesia Campaign does throw out little booklets of tips for players on what sort of character concepts will/won’t work, they’re not written last, so this sort of tip is missing there too. On the other hand, it’s a huge problem within nearly any given chapter just on its own. If you’re making the call on what all monsters to include in a multi-level stretch of a campaign, you should generally avoid choosing nothing but monsters immune to one of the most common bread and butter class features. And honestly, given how the subject matter naturally lends to the deployment of a particular monster type, erring on the side of assuming everyone else is heavily deploying them wouldn’t be a bad assumption for any author to make.

This though, unlike the rest of my gripes, is ultimately a high level problem that needs a high level solution. When you’re publishing a whole campaign, and you’re doing it in a game where several foundational character concepts kinda live or die based on things like whether things are properly harmed by particular flavors of damage, or whether a decent percentage of enemies fall under a certain classification, that really shouldn’t be a double-blind. Coordinating to get all authors to use a decent spread, or include outline notes like “it’d make sense for about half the enemies in this chapter to be fire elemental themed in various ways, but keep a good variety otherwise,” and/or trying to get a rough handle on emergent themes to adjust for/warn about in player-facing pitch material. Even the best-written campaigns are prone to rude awakenings or hilarious reductions in challenge as turns out, say, going all in on cold damage does indeed pay off for the one with Fire in the title.

Meanwhile, on the other side of that coin, more or less, huge swaths of the Amnesia Campaign really just completely break down by failing to account for some basic standard issue capabilities of a typical party. Particularly the fact that past a certain point, you need to account for the fact that the PCs are almost certainly capable of flight. It’s a thing that happens. If you are really keen on writing adventures where local warlords are chilling out on the open-air rooftop patios of their otherwise heavily fortified fortresses, or melee-oriented monsters plan an ambush in a canyon in a vast wasteland, or a dangerous leapfrog between a series of elevated platforms over something dangerous, you want to make those low-level adventures, or else a typical party, possibly even accidentally, will just completely circumvent the whole thing. There is a whole lot of that in the back of the Amnesia Campaign. My group... literally skipped giant swaths. Heck, there was a whole side quest in the last book where the PCs are rewarded with the location of a giant obelisk which I had to cut because... it was in the middle of a big open outdoor space, and they flew over the city on the way in. They definitely had a view over those hedges.

This sort of dovetails into the next issue, consistently escalating threats. The whole fantasy RPG gimmick is that at level 1, you’re a helpless peasant barely capable of doing anything remarkable, and by level 20 you’re literally punching gods in the face and have more money in your pocket than everyone else in your home country combined (with the obvious exception of the other people in your party). Now, mechanically, balancing around that is a very easy math problem. Characters of level X are meant to deal with threats of level Y, either pull a Y level monster out of the book, or slap levels on something lower to bring it to that point, or spread that out over more enemies, then they drop Z amount of fancy loot. Easiest thing in the world. But you also need things to fit together thematically. You can absolutely throw fighter levels onto the local chicken-stealing goblins to make them mechanically as threatening as a demigod bursting through from another plane of reality, but when a group of characters is at a level where they can be expected to handle the former, it’s just plain weird for them to end up dealing with the latter. Like, yes, these particular goblins have 200 HP instead of the usual 4, so the local town guard can’t handle them, but that should never be true of chicken-stealing goblins. You don’t get that tough stealing chickens, and once you’ve gotten that tough, you should have your sights set a good deal higher than that. At least be stealing rocs or something.

The 4th chapter of the Amnesia Campaign is a particularly blatant example of not getting this, featuring a large number of “please be aware the party can fly at this level” moments mentioned above, and also just demanding the PCs deal with problems that really are beneath them at that point. Seeking out local guides, impressing petty local warlords, getting challenged by giants they must impress to rest safely when crossing a huge desert. These are... not appropriate speed bumps at a point in the narrative where the party is traveling to a location where they are going to literally fight a god, weakened or otherwise. The whole setup would be wonderful as the first chapter of a campaign, but that far in, it just doesn’t work. Particularly when the actual opening of the Amnesia Campaign sets the tension very high right off the bat, with extradimensional threats, shapeshifters, an evil cult, things that typically come later as things start to escalate.

This isn’t to say you can’t mix things up a little. Dealing with threats well below a party’s capabilities can be really nice as a chance to just sort of flex, and get some perspective on how much more capable they’ve grown over time, but you have to do it in a low-tension point of the narrative, and a little self-awareness about it doesn’t hurt.

Finally, while I really kinda hate modern wealth-by-level assumptions, they are baked into the design of the game, so if you’re running with it, you really need to make sure you’re really giving the players something they can use. The Amnesia Campaign really leans heavy on treasure being weird oddities that may be of value to a collector... while also being set, generally, in places so totally removed from civilization that shopping trips aren’t really practical. Much less those needing the party to really find the right sort of buyer.

Really, you want to give out entirely practical loot (really hard to do without knowing the party makeup, but variety can work), big piles of cash/sellables along with sufficiently large cities along the way for viable shopping, or raw materials suitable for crafting plus ample time to really do something with them.

Anyway, hopefully this has come across more as practical constructive advice for anyone writing a campaign, either as a printed product or just for your home game, not just me tearing into the Amnesia Campaign at length.

#rpg #game design #gm advice

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years

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Near Misses and First Kisses

Summary:

Crowley has wasted over 6000 years not kissing his angel. He’s decided today’s the day … but things don’t go quite the way he planned. (2277 words)

(AO3)

Crowley breathes in deep, filling his lungs to capacity, then pushes out. Breathes in deep, then pushes out; in and out … in and out … the ritual resembling something along the lines of Lamaze breathing to the rhythm of Killer Queen blaring through the speakers of his car stereo.

If he were human, he would’ve passed out by now.

Driving usually calms him down, but speeding through the city streets at a hundred-and-ten is doing nothing to slow the rapid beating of his heart, nothing to soothe his scattered nerves.

So he focuses on the task at hand, the one he’s rushing to get to.

Wish fulfillment.

‘Today’s the day,’ he thinks as he zips his way to Aziraphale’s shop. ‘This is it. No more excuses. Today’s the day I finally kiss my angel.’

Crowley has the whole scene mapped out, plastered inside his brain. He’s been playing it thru over and over again, familiarizing himself with it so he doesn’t chicken out. As far as he’s concerned, it’s in the stars. It izzz written, he says to himself, mocking Beelzebub’s voice. He takes another breath in and out and reminds himself once again how it will go down.

Crowley will arrive and park in his usual spot across the street, which, of course, will be empty for him. He’ll saunter up to Aziraphale’s door, cool as a cucumber. He’ll knock, thus forcing Aziraphale to open the door and invite him in. He didn’t call ahead of time so Aziraphale won’t be expecting him.

Surprise.

The element of surprise is key.

Aziraphale will open the door, probably a bit put out that some rude customer not only dared to show up at his shop, but knocked instead of walking their happy asses on in. But when he sees Crowley, his face will light up the way it always does, with that angelic glow Crowley has himself convinced is only for him.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale will say, but Crowley won’t say a word. He’ll sweep his angel up in his arms and kiss him. It’ll be perfectly romantic – Crowley will make sure of that.

But as he turns the corner a block away, the grin that’s been growing on his face at the thought of it starts to fade.

What if that’s too forward for Aziraphale?

What if it’s too much?

It’s hard for him to believe, but he has been told he can be a bit much sometimes.

He turns the next corner and slams on the brakes, gripped by a case of mild panic, but it’s too late.

He has arrived.

A voice in his brain keeps repeating that it’s now or never.

If Crowley doesn’t kiss Aziraphale today, he might not find the courage for another thousand years or so.

And that would suck seeing as he’s waited 6000 years already.

What the heck happened to him? Why is he such a frickin’ train wreck? He wants to be sophisticated and devil-may-care like the demon that broke Aziraphale out of the Bastille. Where the heck did that demon go?

He should have kissed him then. Holy Hellfire! That would have been the time to do it, after he’d miracled those chains off his wrists. That would have been romantic as all get out – the dashing rogue kissing his damsel in distress while still in the clutches of the enemy, like right out of the pages of a Harlequin Romance novel.

Not that he has any idea what’s in those. He doesn’t even read.

Ahem.

His mind floods with hundreds of times he could have kissed him, hundreds of opportunities lost, each more romantic than the last. He could have done it after he miracled that stain off Aziraphale’s coat. Or the night he invited him to stay over, before they were both sentenced to execution, or before lunch immediately after. What was he thinking!?

He sighs.

No use looking back. Move forward. Live for today and all that crap.

He decides to stick to the plan for now. Depending on how Aziraphale reacts when he sees him (as predictable as that reaction should be), the plan is subject to change.

He parks his Bentley. He gets out. He saunters across the street and up to the front door, all according to plan. He raises his closed fist to knock, his vision clear in his mind. But before he gets the chance to knock, the door swings open.

Crowley responds with a choked off noise of surprise.

Surprise. Well, that part worked, he guesses.

“Thank Heavens you’re here! Come in, come in! I need your help!” Aziraphale says, whisking back into his shop so quickly Crowley barely catches a glimpse of his face.

Crowley takes a step in and closes the door. He follows Aziraphale, waiting for a break in the conversation so he can rescue his plan back from off the rails, but whatever Aziraphale has on his mind to say, he’s not done.

“Do you remember that estate auction I won a few weeks ago? On that Internet website you showed me called E-bay?”

“I … guess?”

“The books have just arrived!” Aziraphale stops at a low wall of cardboard boxes crowding the doorway to his back room and gestures at them with delight. “I may have underestimated the amount because I don’t hardly have enough space to store them. So I need to get them unpacked and inventoried ASAP! Would you mind lending me a hand?”

“Why not just miracle them out of the boxes?” Crowley asks, groaning mentally in disgust at the thought of unpacking, dusting, and organizing what must be several hundred musty old books … especially considering his plan. “Save yourself the time and trouble of doing all the dirty work by hand?”

Aziraphale shoots Crowley a venomous glare, his glow dimming as his smile falls into a thin, unamused line. “I’m going to forget you said that.” With only a beat in between, he perks back up. “Come on! Just an hour or two, and then we can crack open the bottle of small batch whiskey they sent along with it to celebrate!”

“But Aziraphale, I …”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley for the first time since he’s arrived. His excitement doesn’t fade, but he looks tremendously guilty.

“Oh, I’m sorry! You did stop over for a different reason, didn’t you? I shouldn’t assume …”

“No, no, no! No sorry needed!” Crowley can’t take this moment away from him. Aziraphale has been waiting weeks for these books. He remembers now. And he’s not going to stop him from enjoying them, no matter the reason. “It can wait. Let’s get started. The quicker we start, the quicker we finish, yes?”

Aziraphale’s face brightens again, the glow that accompanies it blinding. “Excellent! Yes! Let’s get started!”

***

“And you know, it took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea of this whole online auction thing.” Aziraphale giggles, pleased beyond belief at his correct use of the modern vernacular for this situation. “I remember back in the old days, auctions were held in barns and town squares and whatnot. It didn’t seem logical to simply enter a price on the computer and then wait to see if you’d win. But you told me that’s how things are done these days. You said it would be all right. So, in the end, I said to myself, Self, take the plunge! It’s an excellent opportunity to …” Aziraphale turns to his sullen helper and looks him over thoughtfully. Crowley hasn’t said a word since they started. Not an acknowledgement, not a grunt, no verbal filler, even now when Aziraphale has stopped talking. He’s running on autopilot, absentmindedly dusting books off and stacking them into a pile without even touching them. He’s here, yes, and doing what Aziraphale asked, but his mind is a million miles away. If Aziraphale didn’t know any better, he’d say that the demon is pouting. Aziraphale puts down the book he’s dusting and sighs. “Crowley?”

“Hmm, what?” Crowley’s eyes snap up, blank and confused and disappointed all at once, which are difficult emotions for serpent eyes to convey, but he manages it.

“My goodness, dear boy! What in the Heaven is going on with you?”

“N-nothing. Why?”

“You’re awfully distracted, that’s why. Have you even heard a single thing I’ve said?”

“I … yes … no … hmm?”

Aziraphale gets up off the couch he’s sitting on and moves to sit beside Crowley. “Please, tell me what’s going on. You’ve got me a bit worried.”

“Uh … okay …” Crowley’s eyes drift to Aziraphale’s lips so swiftly the angel doesn’t seem to notice. “I …”

Aziraphale breathes in softly, expectantly (since he’s waiting for an answer), and suddenly, Crowley decides this is it. The moment he’s been waiting for. He has Aziraphale’s complete attention. And he’s just inches away. He wouldn’t even have to make a big production out of it. A simple lean in will do. Move forward and kiss him on the mouth, quick and painless - probably not the best two adjectives to describe a first kiss, one he’s been waiting 6000 years for, but they’re the ones that pop to mind.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale says with honest concern. “Tell me what’s the matter? Is it something I said? Something I did?”

“I … I wanted to … well, I was hoping to …”

“Yes …?” Aziraphale leans in himself and Crowley’s brain short circuits. They are both perfectly poised for this kiss! It doesn’t get much better than this!

Crowley stops trying to explain, though he probably should be asking. But he can’t seem to get the words out. Aziraphale, may I kiss you? There! It sounds so simple in his head. But he didn’t practice that. No, what he practiced in his head was a smooth, suave, swashbuckling-type maneuver … that got kneecapped the second Aziraphale opened the door.

But he can recover, bring it back to that. He’s just going to do it, no warning so he doesn’t scare Aziraphale off. One little peck, that’s all he’s aiming for.

Jesus Christmas! Hastur got it wrong. Mr. Slick he’s not.

Crowley doesn’t understand it! He’s done hundreds of temptations on random humans and never had performance anxiety this extreme! Of course, he’s never actually kissed any of the humans he’s tempted. He’s never kissed anybody.

And Aziraphale isn’t a random human. He’s Aziraphale.

“Fuck it,” he mutters and shifts forward, Aziraphale’s lips mere breaths away. There’s no way he can screw this up. None whatsoever.

And eventually Crowley does succeed in kissing him, but it doesn’t turn out the way he’d planned - though, at this point, he has to accept that the plan has gone belly up.

At the last possible moment, the bell over the bookshop door tinkles, and Aziraphale turns to see who has come in. Crowley kisses him, yes, but on the cheek, not the lips. He hears Aziraphale gasp, and without thinking to, without meaning to, Crowley makes time stop.

Aziraphale looks around, looks at him, feeling in the pit of his stomach what Crowley has done. The look in his eyes throws Crowley for its utter imperceptibility.

Is Aziraphale angry? Does he feel Betrayed? Violated?

Does he hate him now?

Oh, God! What did he do!? What did he do!? Why didn’t he just ask? That would have been the best course of action, plan be dammed! And he knew it! He knew better! He’s so stupid!

“I … I-I-I-I-I … I’m sorry!” Crowley scoots back on the sofa a foot. “I’m so sorry! I should have asked! I shouldn’t have assumed …”

“You missed.” Aziraphale’s voice rises only slightly above a whisper, but it’s firm, clear, and now Crowley is thoroughly confused.

“Come again?”

“You missed, my dear.” Aziraphale puts a hand to Crowley’s cheek, caressing gently. With none of the fear, anxiety, or clumsiness of his demon companion, he closes the gap between them, tilts his head, and kisses Crowley on the lips. When Crowley doesn’t react, too stunned to think straight, Aziraphale kisses him again. He kisses him and kisses him till Crowley comes back from the recesses of his frazzled brain and starts kissing him back, his hand finding the back of Aziraphale’s head and bringing him closer.

No, it’s not a peck, and it’s not quick, but it’s also not ambitious, because that’s not what kisses should be. It’s an exchange, a communication. In that one kiss, Aziraphale tells Crowley how long he’s waited, how much he’s wanted, how patient he’s been, how frightened for never, and now, how much he loves him.

And Crowley says it back.

It’s also not painless.

There’s heartbreak in that kiss - arguments, minor insults, fears of loss, of never evers, of gone for all eternity.

Of mourning best friends.

As far as first kisses go, this one is magical.

Neither angel nor demon want the kiss to end, but there comes a natural pause, and in it, Aziraphale smiles. “Is that why you came over here today? To kiss me?”

“Mmm … maybe …” Crowley mumbles, his forehead resting against Aziraphale’s, in no hurry to be anywhere outside of these few inches. “Well … ngh … I … yeah. Yeah it is.”

“Good.” Aziraphale sits back slowly, straightening his vest, a silent cue for Crowley to start time again. “I’m glad.”

“Are you really?” Crowley’s body follows Aziraphale as he makes to leave the room, subconsciously determined to follow wherever he leads from this day forward.

“Yes.” Aziraphale’s eyes meet Crowley’s shyly before he stands to greet his customers. “You saved me the bus fare.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #Frankie writes #good omens fanfiction #aziraphale #anthony j crowley

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strixton · 3 years

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i'm gonna ramble here about my current dnd character (not the ofna one, the warforged)

so Ekeg, aka Model Ekeg, is a warforged who has heavy organic usages in their design and they have currently kinda broken and have amnesia

so he only remembers the past 5 years of his "life" and some random images of his past

So he is really attached to his group of orphans that he lived with before he joined the campaign im in, and he only joined the group to get a job so he can get some extra coin to battle the royal guard, who took his kids away

and he is a complete robin hood theif, except he usually just doesn't care about any people, only hating the rich and taking care of any kid he meets, favoring orphans, though i sense he will grow very attached to our wizard.

this walking talking emotional robot is unique in this world cause most robots in their world are sentient, and definately don't feel paint, yet ekeg does, so he gets damaged, feels pain, and gets pissed. when he gets pissed at someone, it blinds him and can make him hyper focus on killing them. kinda like a barbarian's rage, but more controles and less op

Ekeg also just despises the royal guard, like yeah, steal from the rich and give to orphan kiddos, but ROYAL GUARDS??? OH ILL FUCK THEM UP LEMME AT THEM!!!!

And he is very glitchy due to being technically damaged and extremely old, needing some updates. so he stutters and his joints sometimes creek if he fails a stealth role and they cover part of their face due to damages (don't wanna scare the kids)

And like, he doesn't smell or eat, just exists, sometimes digesting oil to heal himself. so a stinky place? no problem doesn't affect me. toxic gas in a room? i'm not affected. the smell of a stinky enemy? i won't detect it...

i am immune to poison due to robot, but i am vuneralble to fire cause i'm highly organic in some of my parts, especially my chest area, which has a delicate flower and lots of wood.

And it is obvious he was designed for some magical war in the past, but he isnt tanky, so he must have been dps or long range in the past. as a player, i don't even know. i left that up to my dm cause i trust him XD (can't wait for my character arc)

and this is a completely different kind of rogue than onda, my rogue in ofna. onda is very free flowing and is a pirate. she has fun and isn't afraid to blow stuff up. she can be sneaky, she does steal, but her whole rogue thing is she is a swashbuckler with a craving for the open seas and to clear her name of murder.

ekeg however is very orderly, calm until provoked, sneaky, and overall, a kinda parental figure to his kiddos he adopted. he isn't happy go lucky, but focused and directed, like a robot. He doesn't take stupid risks or act chaotic, he does good deeds and then steals your walet if you are rich. He isn't like onda, which is why i love to play rogues since they can be so versitile.

#ofna #ekeg #dnd #my ocs

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pixelgrotto · 4 years

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Ladies and lords of Waterdeep

From April of 2019 to June of 2020, I ran Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for levels 1-5, for two groups - a party of three gals and a party of six guys. This was a tricky undertaking - mostly because as written, Dragon Heist is kind of a mess (more on that in a sec) - but also because I had to balance an adventure for two very different audiences that really only shared the commonality of being filled with D&D newbies. It was a worthwhile endeavor, though, and looking back on the experience reveals some interesting food for thought on how to remix an adventure, as well as how some ladies and gents experience roleplaying games differently.

First, let me briefly discuss the adventure itself. Dragon Heist is meant to be an urban outing set in the Forgotten Realms metropolis of Waterdeep, which I described to my New York-dwelling players as “pretty much a fantasy version of NYC.�� Over the course of five levels, players inherit and possibly renovate an old tavern, catch wind of an ancient heap of gold beneath the city and run into a bunch of important figures from Forgotten Realms history, ranging from Laeral Silverhand to Volothamp Geddarm. All of that’s epic, and the only issue is that the adventure’s laid out in a pretty shoddy way.

There are four chapters in Dragon Heist, and the first is the only one that can be run with a minimum of hacking on the part of the Dungeon Master. The other three present a so-called “toolbox” of vague ideas for missions with Waterdeep’s various adventuring factions, as well as middling advice for scenes like a rooftop chase and a battle with a chain devil in a crypt, but it’s all highly disorganized with a minimum of connective tissue, requiring heavy lifting on the DM’s part to stitch together. The book is also rife with excessive red herrings for players to stumble upon as they search for the treasure trove, way too many characters with overly long names, and last but not least, there’s a lack of an actual “heist” in the grand finale, which is more scavenger hunt than Ocean’s Eleven.

With all these criticisms, why did I choose to run this book for not one, but two different groups at the same time? It was largely because I’d just finished playing through Dragon Heist with my own character - a mask-wearing teenage street urchin who fancied herself a swashbuckler. I’d had a more-enjoyable-than-not time with the folks I played with, but the guy who DMed had a habit of sending us on the aforementioned red herrings for multiple sessions at a time, with nary an interesting combat encounter or social challenge in sight. I don’t really blame him for this - especially seeing at how poorly the book was laid out afterwards - but immediately after finishing, I was approached by two friend groups who wanted to try their hand at D&D, and this gave me the excuse to see if I could do a better job.

Since I already had a clear example of which pitfalls to avoid, the version of Dragon Heist that I ran heavily remixed all of the elements in the book, with an emphasis on streamlining whenever possible and always making it feel like my players were accomplishing something. This is usually my underlying philosophy whenever I run a game, but it’s an essential strategy for newbies who might be driven off of roleplaying games altogether by bad pacing. For instance, as written, there’s an annoying series of fetch quests near the end of the story where players have to find a number of keys in order to open the hidden treasure vault. These keys are random as heck, ranging from semi-sensible McGuffins like a bronze dragon scale to bonkers junk like a ballad played by two dwarven bards and a friggin’ unicorn. This whole exercise in randomness reminded me of the worst of video game filler, and I cut it out entirely by having the son of the man who hid the treasure accompany the characters, with a drop of his blood activating the magic needed to open the vault’s doors. (This also led to an amusing situation where the guys were stuck as they ruminated on how to open the vault...until the dude playing the goliath suddenly shouted, “I GRAB RENAER’S HAND, CUT IT AND SMEAR THE BLOOD ALL OVER THE DOOR!” and I was like, “Okay. It...opens!”)

Because my players were nearly all D&D virgins, I also wanted them to get their money’s worth by encountering all four of Dragon Heist’s villains - Xanathar the beholder, the devil-worshipping Cassalanter nobles, Manshoon the cloned wizard and Jarlaxle the drow rogue. As written, Dragon Heist touts itself as highly replayable, since DMs are only supposed to choose one villain for their players to go up against. The problem is that all of the bad guys are teased on the cover, and the beginning chapters dangle most of them into the narrative with the players caught in the middle. This created a lot of confusion when I was a player, as my companions and I kept hearing about Xanathar and Manshoon...only for them to suddenly disappear halfway through as Jarlaxle took center stage as the big bad. And so, in order to circumvent this confusion and make both the boys and the girls feel like they were getting a quintessential experience with a minimum of loose ends, I threw in all the baddies. (I wasn’t the only one to do this - tabletop RPG designer Justin Alexander also recommends this approach on his blog The Alexandrian, where he offers an impressive revision of Dragon Heist that I probably would’ve used if I hadn’t discovered it too late.)

So, when it came down to actually rolling dice, how’d my two groups interact with the material? I think it’s safe to say that both the girls and the boys hit the same major story beats and had a grand time doing so, but the nuances of their experiences were fascinatingly different. The girls, for instance, dove into the art of roleplaying and devising histories for their characters, and one of them decided to play as an elf from a seafaring clan and gave me a whole backstory involving the ocean that inspired my “final boss” for Dragon Heist, an evil, decaying dragon from the Elemental Plane of Water that isn’t in the book. (Hey, it’s called Dungeons & Dragons, the story’s named Dragon Heist, and since I wasn’t sure if all of my players would stick around for future campaigns, I figured I’d better stick a notable battle with a big scaly lizard in there somewhere.)

The girls also got way more into some of the social justice subplots that permeated my version of Dragon Heist, pushing hard for Waterdeep to remove the anti-dragon magic bubble that surrounded the city and excluded an entire species from its borders. Their interactions with non-player characters - often progressing along the lines of “well, if you feel like you want us to do this quest for you, then we certainly can” - reflected this sort of empathy, and even though this sounds incredibly stereotypical, by the time the final session wrapped up, all three of the gals had either shipped or flirted with NPCs that they’d encountered during their journey. One of ‘em even ended up hitched with a baby!

The boys, by contrast, were much less likely to devise in-depth character histories beyond “I’M IN THIS CITY TO GET MY MONEY,” and their NPC conversations also frequently waded into “GIMME MY GOLD” territory. I don’t want to make it sound like their characters were just two dimensional mercenaries, though, because definite, organic progression occurred over the course of the campaign - the goliath who couldn’t read gradually worked his way through Volo’s Guide to Monsters and became fluent in Celestial after joining the Order of the Gauntlet, for instance.

Where the boys clearly felt more at home than the girls was in combat, probably because 1) there were six of them as opposed to the three ladies, and 2) they collectively had lots of video game knowledge, and D&D’s influence has kinda trickled down to every video game ever made. It didn’t take long for some of the dudes to begin subconsciously min/maxing their characters, and while there were two major deaths in unpredictable boss fights, the boys did go through a long period where they were just steamrolling everything to come their way and yelling, “LET’S FUCKIN’ GOOOO” as they did so. In contrast, DMing for the girls during combat sequences was occasionally a nail-biting experience where I didn’t know who was going to survive, and since some of this was due to my own slapdash encounter design where I underestimated the abilities of the monsters they were up against, I made sure to give them lots of friendly NPCs who could potentially offer a helping hand, or even resurrection spells if needed.

Both groups were aware of the other’s existence, and I’d sometimes playfully pit them against one another. (Example: The guys often forgot who was who, and one time one of ‘em looked down at his character sheet and was like, “MY NOTES ARE SUCH SHIT” which made me respond, “Well, y’know the girls take really good notes...”) But at the end of the campaign, when my players asked me which party was more fun to DM for, my answer was that both groups were great. The girls were bursting with imaginative roleplay, and they gave me real moments of glee as they responded to story twists with the legitimate surprise and wonder that comes from people who aren’t already overexposed to fantasy tropes and gaming culture. The boys gave me that feeling of what some fans affectionately call “beer & pretzels D&D,” where you’re shooting the breeze with your buddies, playfully teasing each other and going for broke in combat encounters.

I want to stress that the ladies I DMed for were absolutely not representative of how all women might approach D&D, and the exact same thing must be said for the fellas. This was no planned sociology or gender studies experiment that I conducted, in other words - it was merely a thing that I did with two friend groups, and the resulting experiences were two opposite yet totally valid sides of the same RPG coin. And while I doubt that I’ll run the same campaign in the future for two different groups at once (let alone a campaign as wonky as Dragon Heist), I like to think that as someone who tries to advocate for how roleplaying games can be fun, welcoming experiences for all, I played a small role (hah) in bringing swords, sorcery and storytelling to the lives of people who might not have experienced such imaginative forays otherwise.

Already, both the gals and the guys are whipping up ideas for future characters and checking out stuff like Critical Role...which means that my work here, at least for the moment, is done.

#pixel grotto #musings #tabletop gaming #dungeons & dragons #d&d #waterdeep: dragon heist

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rerollpodcast-blog · 6 years

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Why are there so many grapplers?

If you’ve been playing for a while, then I’m guessing at some point you’ve played with someone who played “a grappler” character. Even if you haven’t, the internet is full of stories and anecdotes of players that build their character around the grappler mechanic (in fact one of my players’ grappler died and he just made another grappler). Now, I’m not badmouthing them, but it did get me wondering: why is the grappler so ubiquitous? I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I think that the underlying answer actually has a lot to say about the way we play and think about martials in 5e. To explain why, we’re going to have a look at the differences between magical and martial classes, the shortcomings of the latter, and how to make life more interesting for your martial players.

Jackie Chan: the epitome of a martial

First, let’s look at the way magical classes are set up. Let’s say you wanted to create a new magic-based character. In terms of playstyle, you have quite a lot of options. You can be the blasty-mage that throws fireballs and lightning bolts. You can be a healer, supporting the party and tending to their wounds. You can be a Loki-like trickster, focusing on illusions and charms and deception. You can be a summoner, or a shapeshifter. Or you can focus on utility and be able to change terrain and crowd control your foes. You get so many options as a mage, and that’s not even counting the many ways you can mix and match your spell lists, or the completely different mechanics that each magical class has on their own.

Martials on the other hand are considerably more limited. Their options boil down to essentially: do you want to use two handed weapons, do you want to use an offhand weapon, do you want to use a ranged weapon, or do you want a shield. And even after those exciting choices, they largely all play the same way: run up to/away from something, roll a d20 and then do some damage. Compared to mages, martials just can’t compare in terms of playstyle options. Hell, just look at what’s available to a level 1 wizard compared to a level 1 fighter. The wizard gets to pick 9 spells from a list of 65. Fighters get to pick 4 weapons from a list of 36, most of which do the same thing or are inferior versions of each other.

Now at this point you may retort: “but flavour wise, the classes feel different.” And you are right on this point, but it is very discouraging when your flavour choices don’t reflect in your gameplay. The mysterious, Loki-like, illusion-specced mage plays very differently to the trigger-happy, fireball throwing mage. On the other hand, we have both the gallant longsword-wielding Champion Fighter and the savage warhammer wielding Berserker Barbarian who just run up to things and hit them for 1d10+STR mod damage.

Martials end up feeling like the mechanical equivalent of the Mass Effect 3 ending

And that’s where I think grapplers come in. Mechanically speaking, grapplers just feel different to traditional martial gameplay. Rather than roll a d20 and compare to AC, you have a contested roll-off against your DM; that’s an exciting tension beat. Instead of inflicting damage, you inflict a status; that opens up new strategies. You get to move your target, you get to set up your target for co-operative attacks. I don’t think people play grapplers because they’re inherently fun to play, they play them because there aren’t many other variants of a martial to explore. The grappler just feels different, and most importantly, feels like a uniquely martial style of gameplay; it’s not like Gandalf ever did judo. But what do we do about this? How do we “fix” the martial classes to make them feel like individual classes? How do we make the martial classes feel like they’re more than just different flavours of attacks? Well in my opinion, there are three main methods: items, techniques, and environment.

First up, let’s look at items. Items (especially homebrewed ones) are a really easy way to tailor a character to a certain playstyle vision since you can let them do literally anything. Of course, the type of items you give is important. If you want to play into a flavour archetype, you need to look beyond just adding more damage, it needs to either play to their strengths, overcome their weaknesses, or synergise with their mechanics. It’s probably why the “blink dagger” is such a classic item to introduce for a rogue player. It lets the rogue be sneaky, be agile, zip around, and most importantly: stab people. The mechanics of the item fit with the flavour of the character. It makes a rogue play uniquely like a rogue.

It helps here if you already know what your player wants out of their character. For example, I had a (revised) ranger player whose backstory involved them being the fantasy equivalent of a secret agent. So, I gave them a bow that could attach special arrowheads like Hawkeye, turning them into more of a stealth-infiltrator-utility character. That player went wild with that bow, using it for everything from long range shackles, smoke bombs, and grappling hooks. They even opted to keep it after bows that did more damage became available. I’d like to think it’s because it let them feel uniquely like a ranger; stealthing around and setting traps, playing with cunning rather than pure strength.

Slightly disappointed I didn’t see a USB arrow

Now, items are all well and good, but they do have their limitation in that they require a bit of knowledge of what your players want already, require some skill in homebrewing, and are largely DM driven. After all, we’re trying to make enticing options for creating martial characters, but your player won’t know what items they’re getting when they create their character. Instead, let’s look at something that’s largely player driven: techniques. When I say techniques, I’m referring to abilities that aren’t hard-written into the rules of D&D but are instead flavourful abilities that players ascribe to their actions and require the DM to adjudicate effects on. For example: the ranger that asks if they can shoot at a flying creature’s wings to bring them down; that would be an example of a technique. It’s not something that’s strictly in the ranger’s abilities or in the rules for flying, but it would make sense from an in-game perspective.

Techniques like these can be extremely useful for when players want to feel like their individual strengths make a difference in-game. A bow toting ranger may be able to make that shot at the enemy’s wings, but not the axe wielding barbarian, and you want to reward those strengths and creative thinking. I have a barbarian/enforcer rogue player that has a spear that lights itself on fire. Originally my intent with the item was just that it sets creatures on fire for extra damage. Ironically however, she’s used it for just about everything except that. She’s done everything from creating sparks to blind people, lighting explosive materials on fire, melting gears in a construct’s arm to disable them, and stabbing it in an ogre’s back to ride them around Batman-on-a-mutated-henchman style. None of these are strictly in the rules, and thus required me to come up with a ruling and a check on the spot. I like to encourage her to request these techniques though because they let her play her barbarian-rogue the way she envisioned them; a swashbuckling pirate that likes fighting dirty.

Dale Gribble knows what I’m talking about

Our final differentiation method is one that let’s both the player and the DM control the input: the environment. In a way, the environment is like a combination of the above two methods, it’s like providing a short-term item that creative players can make a technique with. And its so easy to implement too, just describe your battlegrounds more. You certainly don’t need to come up with a list of potential actions that your players could use with every single item in the room like you were coding a video game, your players will come up with it for you. All you need to do is make sure your players know that they’re fighting in more than a featureless void and they’ll get to work. Indeed, my best players even start asking me if there’s certain objects in the room, just so they can enact some crazy plan they’ve come up with. Nine times out of ten, I’ll say yes, just to see what they do.

The best part about using the environment is that different classes will see the environment in different ways, and utilise it depending on their strengths. The agile rogue may see a hanging chandelier as a convenient method to get across the room, while the eagle-eyed ranger may see it as a heavy object to shoot down on their enemy. The brazier of coals can be knocked over by the cunning fighter to slow the enemy, or the savage barbarian can throw their foe into it to cook them alive.

This is going too far though

So, now we know three good methods for providing class differentiation. But, here comes the tricky part: convincing your players to use them. You see, the methods are not overly difficult, and I would argue that a lot of them are more fun than just vanilla attacking. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, attacking just seems to be the strictly better option. Why take a creature down by shooting its wings, when you can just take it down by killing it? Why bother knocking over a brazier to slow down your enemies, when you can just stab them? In other words, what’s the incentive to be creative?

Personally, I like to encourage it in a few ways. First, is that I don’t make fights overly punishing. When players know that they don’t need to optimise every single action to come out victorious, they feel the freedom to mess around a bit more and go for the fun plays. That barbarian-rogue I mentioned before? Sure, she’s done all those cool things; but she’s also failed at a whole lot more. But, punishment is rarely anything more serious than if she had missed an attack, so she feels free to try again another time.

The second is the inverse of the first. When my players try something out of the ordinary, I like to reward them. If they attempt a technique as an action, I will make sure that the successful result is at least as useful as an action spent attacking. If my fighter knocked over that brazier of coals, my minions will over-react, taking the long way around, or attacking in a way that lets the fighter knock them back into the coals for even more damage. Nothing kills a player’s enthusiasm quite as much as pulling off what they thought was a great move, only to find out it achieved next to nothing.

Finally, I like to encourage creative fighting by joining in on the fun myself. Particularly noteworthy NPC’s have special weapons and items that make them feel like more than just vanilla damage dealers. My NPC’s attempt big plays just as much as my players do, and mess around with the environment like a player would. I’ll admit, I’ve even thrown a few NPC grapplers at my players just for the fun of it. Not only does seeing the DM do these methods assure the player that it’s okay to do them, it also inspires them to try their own things.

I hope that this has helped inspire you and your players to explore the potential of the martial classes again. Instead of resorting to one-note tricks like playing a “grappler,” try to use items, techniques, and environments to bolster creativity, and let martial classes really shine. So many times, I’ve heard people complain that martials are just plain boring compared to all of the options that magical classes have. And while it may be true that magical classes get many more options than martials, I’ve found that once you give martials anything to work with, they end up using it even more creatively than the mages do with their spells. So, work with your martials, and maybe we can finally remove all these luchadore stories from the front page of Reddit.

#dnd martials dndadvice grapplers luchadores

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exilesofembermark · 6 years

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Exiles Game Dev Update | 8.22.18

“I know you took my sandwich.” - the Ranger whose importance will soon be revealed

You’ll get a better look at him below, but as we populate your Player Camp and work through the storylines and Quests for Exiles, we’re designing the key actors in the dramas that you will encounter. One is your guide, your friend, your compatriot in knowing what’s what out there in the wilderness, and he will indeed fix you with that Gaze.

Last update, we focused on the Adventure Log, enemy Abilities, the full terror of the Bear, the new Forge and the long-promised 3D traveling camp.This time, it’s the “Explore” feature in PVE, a swashbuckling boss baddie, Embermark populations and the reveal of the Houses redux! Read on…

THAT MYSTERIOUS RANGER

As mentioned, we’re developing this character to help you, inform you and play a part in the drama that goes on within this castoff continent of Embermark. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice some details from other characters we’ve show on him, and you’ll also covet his gear. Don’t worry, we’re figuring out how to get it to you.

His order will wield a blade such as this, but his will be... different.

Here we are in the new player camp, with an assortment of scrolls, maps and tomes upon the Ranger’s oaken table. Don’t take the “Ranger” menu button seriously-- we’re figuring out what parts of the UI will be housed under this guy’s purview.

THE BLIZZARD

Few Abilities in the game come with a more chilling effect than the Mage’s cornerstone Blizzard. As we crank out the VFX for this milestone’s Abilities, we get a sneak peek at where this damaging, slowing spell’s look is developing.

And, of course, we need to see the caster’s effects too:

EXPLORE

As you Quest across the broken lands of Embermark, you will encounter an array of NPCs, make choices about everything from which political side to join to whether or not you should show mercy to a passerby. In addition, you will Explore. The twist on the typical random encounter here is that any given place on the world map where you can Explore can actually have any of the game’s PVE content available. In the below example, an Explore node of “Raiding The Realm” comes with a bunch of hidden content that the player will be served one of, after which they can replay the node to round out the exploration to the number of times available. You can imagine a node full of baddies, a lost treasure that’s super hard to “roll” or a key choice for you to make that you best not leave unchosen (lest some reputation not go the way it needs to).

DARKEYE AND HIS SYNDICATE

The Levels 1-10 experience, where players learn all of the various systems mechanics in the game, will have an assortment of foes to face on the way to freeing Wildewoods from the treachery of the Darkeye Syndicate.

That Syndicate is led by a boss you will eventually face, and he not only dual-wields nasty swashbuckling swords, he’s hiding a blunderblaster behind him... and he WILL use it.

He’s not going to come at you every round of combat, though. He’s mortal, after all. He’ll need to reload.

BADDIE POPULATIONS

This is very much a work-in-progress tool, but the design team is exploring how to visually represent populations and danger and such on the map. An early experiment in this is a heat map we’ve put together to show where some of the key enemies (or simply beings) are concentrating themselves.

It’s not data driven yet, so don’t get too caught up in where the Ethereals lie, but if you want to fiddle around with some of the thinking behind starting populations, check this out.

QUEST INTROS

Part of the design challenge for an RPG like this-- making it fiercely mobile while satisfying the needs of a fantasy enthusiast-- is providing enough lore and setting for those who desire that flavor while making it super-fluid and quick for those who don’t. How a player gets into an Encounter has changed a bit throughout the game’s development as we think through that challenge.

THE DUNGEON AUTHORING TOOL

A few Updates ago, we previewed the mocks for the way dungeons in Exiles will lay out and and work. And now, we have a TOOL.

It might not be pretty, but it’s awesome. The tool we’re putting together allows a designer to create, edit, populate and publish an Exiles dungeon to the game in real-time (as long as the NPCs, lewtz, and other assets are in the database). We’ve baked in the ability to change configurations of “rooms,” author the difficulty of bad guys, copy and paste and create multiple-run dungeons.

And no, there won’t be a dungeon called this one’s name (but I wish there were).

HOUSE BANNERS

Houses. It’s a system we’re working on to give players cooperation, competition and purpose. It’s a piece of the Exiles lore that frames up history, factionalism and ideals.

We’ve shared a lot about this system in the past. And I’ve shared that the ongoing lore development has led to some changes. Two Houses remained largely the same. Two changed names but not details. And two changed both.

On top of that, we’ve designed the banners to represent not just the ideals of the Houses (that your Guild will one day declare for), but some of the finer points of their cultures too. You will find in each banner multiple images or designs (notice the borders even) that tell you multiple things about each House.

Take a look-- and plan on hearing much more about each...

(higher res version here)

ROGUE LOOT

Many in the Exiles community have been pining for the introduction of the game’s Rogue class, and I assure you-- no one is as impatient for backstabbing and guile-y hijinks than me. But we’re slowly getting into the production of our 3rd Class as we do a million other things, and the fruits of that production are starting to show.

In the form of loot! Soon enough, you’ll be wielding daggers like this:

Medium chest-pieces like this:

And (if we can make it work) even cloaks! (which would naturally be in the Shoulders loot slot) like this:

NEW BATTLEGROUNDS

As we dive deeper into where you’ll be battling baddies (and each other), another couple environments that we’ll use quite a bit include the spooky ruins...

...and the Bog of Boggeyness (soon to be renamed).

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER…

We’ll keep sharing details as we head toward testing (go here to sign up for testing and be among The First), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

CONNECT WITH OTHER EXILES

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly crew with plenty of daily/weekly/sometimes-planned shenanigans.

BONUS: THE ELF LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM

We’ve shared much about the Exiles version of elves (the Highs left during the Collapse, the Woods are sooooper angry about it, and the others-- well-- we’ll get to that). And though we won’t light them up in the game this way, the model is quite dramatic presented as such.

BONUS 2: DROPPING A COSMIC SHELL ON YOUR DUMB HEAD

You’re not there yet, but you can imagine what it would be like, right?

BONUS 3: A PRE-TEXTURE ARCANE WALL

Ability: Arcane Wall. Effect: Serious blocking.

(check out the too-big-for-Tumblr gif here)

#concept art #fantasy #rpg

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fuzz1912 · 6 years

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I’ve got an okay feeling about this

A fan’s review of SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.

(Spoilers ahoy, matey. Proceed with extreme caution. Running on extreme low sleep, so this will probably be updated over the next day or so.)

I’ve been pretty clear about the parameters for what I consider to be a good Star Wars film. My initial concern has been that they should at least be internally consistent, and consistent within (let alone respectful of) the established lore of the Star Wars universe. Beyond that, my mind also turns to whether or not it merely repeats what has come before or extends the universe in logical and interesting ways. Is there a need for this story to be told, or does it excessively rely on (or trivially extrapolate from) a known backstory? And finally, does it strike the right balance of humour and fan service while telling a decent story that stands on its own?

So, having been quite critical of Disney’s previous Star Wars releases on that basis, how does this latest instalment fare?

May the month of May be with you

There’s something right about Star Wars in May. Despite the attempts by all and sundry to turn a stupid dad joke into ‘Star Wars Day’ (May the Fourth - get it? No, Cinco de Quatro is much better), in fact the month of May has its own enduring significance for the franchise. Each of the original and prequel trilogy movies were released around the mid-May Memorial Day holiday. In the US, this means summer, when kids are on break and sitting in an air-conditioned cinema is preferable compared to just about anything else. For us on the other side of the world, it is on the cusp of winter, just as the weather really starts turning for the worse - the wind picks up, the chill sets in, and darkness falls before you know it.

It’s those memories of fighting to stay warm while making it to midnight on a dark, crisp winter’s night that have always accompanied first watching a new Star Wars film for me. For some entirely silly commercial reason, Disney has thus far eschewed the traditional May release window instead choosing December for its premieres, which has never felt right to me - December is for Christmas movies and Lords of the Ring, not Star Wars. So if nothing else, there’s some small satisfaction for me in being able to enjoy a new Star Wars movie for the first time again in the cold of May - perhaps its karma, but it feels like that’s translated to my reaction to this second anthology film.

Why make a movie about Han Solo?

Here is a character who is infamous for his intrigue. Many so-called fans criticise George Lucas for adding context to Star Wars where they believed none was necessary - see the “Han shot first” controversy (the real objection being that Greedo shot at all - which changes nothing about Han himself)(1) - in which case, why sacrifice the ultimate lamb and give him an origin story? That being said, I am loath to be too critical of the raison d’être for the ‘Star Wars Story anthology’ films (this and ROGUE ONE) - they have to date been somewhat respectful of Canon, made some generous nods to what is now ‘Legends’, and taken some interesting new directions in filling the gaps in the existing story. We don’t necessarily need them (much like we don’t need the Saga to continue an already concluded story), but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything interesting to add to the stories we already love.

Back in the very early days of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (what would now be called ‘Legends’) there was a series of novellas by Brian Daley about a pre-Yavin Han Solo and his adventures with Chewbacca and (you guessed it) a couple of droids on the Millennium Falcon, as he tried to eke out a living as a white hat smuggler in the Empire-lite Corporate Sector.(2) They were some of the first EU books that I read, and simple though they were, I enjoyed them because they were episodic tales set in a different part of the world of Star Wars established by the films. They weren’t high stakes, and didn’t give Han Solo an origin or back story - they just gave a glimpse into some of the sort of swashbuckling adventures that we assumed the character we met in the Cantina Bar would have had.

This movie is nowhere near as light or insignificant as that - much like ROGUE ONE before it, it takes a throwaway line mentioned in the original film and turns it into a definitive origin story about how Han Solo became that guy who shot first.(3)

Now the story of a film that lost everything and the one director who had no choice but to bring it all together

From what little has been made public, this film has not had an easy gestation - even more so than ROGUE ONE, whose ending was completely changed (undoubtedly for the better). THE LEGO MOVIE directors were fired during the shoot due to “creative differences” with writer Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the brilliant EMPIRE (but also the lackluster AWAKENS). Apparently their take was too humorous and not the sarcastic selfishness that characterises Han Solo - which I guess is a good thing considering how ridiculous the obvious jokes in the Disney ‘Saga’ films have been. Their replacement is none other than early Lucas protege and all-round pretty damn talented Ron Howard of Imagine Entertainment (not Orange County Imagine), whose voice is embedded in many of our heads thanks to his shoddy narration of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.(4)

Ron Howard reliably makes good movies. He might not have the most stylistic flair, he may not be the most innovative or creative, he may not use the most challenging source material, but it would be difficult to suggest that any of the movies he’s made are anything less than solidly watchable - and most of them have been, in their own way, pretty great. He now runs a director’s masterclass, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better teacher from whom to learn the craft.

George Lucas had offered Howard the opportunity to direct previoud Star Wars films over the years, but as with Lucas’s other bestie Steven Spielberg, Howard didn’t want to take the reigns from his longtime friend. Now that Lucas has rather foolishly handed the keys over to the Walt Disney Company, that reluctance seems to have diminished. I’ve been disappointed with the direction Disney has been leading the franchise enough times to have serious doubts about this film, but the one thing that kept me optimistic about it was that it was ultimately left to Howard to deliver the final product.

That faith was well placed - this was the first Star Wars film in some time that I really enjoyed.

“You’re the good guy”

The fundamental premise of the film appears to manifest itself in this line of dialogue that Qi’ra casually throws away towards the climax. This information will spoil the payoff of A NEW HOPE, just like knowing who Darth Vader is spoils the reveal in EMPIRE. But it’s nevertheless true to the core of the character of the Han Solo that we know and love - despite being a selfish cad and a scoundrel, he is a softy underneath.

Given the context above about the importance of the tone of the film, it would appear that the decision made by Lucasfilm to bring in Howard was on the money (though really, the question is why he wasn’t there from the start). Moments of over the top humour have been toned down (at least from what I can recall of one of the early trailers showing Han being interviewed to join the Imperial Academy). That’s not to say there aren’t any funny moments, but for the most part they feel earned and not simply played for easy laughs (like *ahem* Poe/Hux).

There are some call-backs in the dialogue to the original films that might go a little too far (L3: “They don’t even serve our kind here”), but they are mostly effective when they subvert our expectations (“I hate you”/“I know” and “I’ve got a GOOD feeling about this”) which is nice when the film itself is a giant call-back. On the other hand, there were a couple of lines of dialogue that strayed towards uncharacteristically real-world expletives - especially Han’s use of the phrase “Bantha crap”, when we all know the correct terminology is “poodoo”.

Visually the film was just as much of a treat as any Star Wars movie, exploring some new frontiers with the Maelstrom / Maw surrounding Kessel, as well as the WWI-style trench warfare and snow train hijacking scenes. What I loved about each of these was that they created new unfamiliar environments with their own mechanics that drove the plot and the plight of the characters, as Star Wars does at its best. The Kessel Run - in particular the climax with the Millennium Falcon trying to escape both a hideous space monster and a black hole / gravity well at the same time - was both spectacular and incredibly intense to watch, despite the fact that you know that the chracters you’re invested in are going to survive (and that the Falcom reliably has trouble making the jump to lightspeed). From that perspective, it far exceeded anything in the last couple of ‘Saga’ films (two hour long chases of fuel attrition, anyone?).

The music was serviceable and on par with, if not a little better than, Michael Giacchino’s score for ROGUE ONE. It was used effectively and enjoyable, with impactful use of the well-known themes and leitmotifs. While I wouldn’t have called it as memorable as John Williams at his best (he was only partially involved), it was adequate if not decent - and unlike the ‘Saga’ films, it didn’t have to be any more than that.

Finally, the performances were for the most part quite good. Alden Ehrenreich faced the near impossible task of stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes to recreate one of cinema’s most iconic characters, and he did it pretty well. Rather than attempt to mimick or channel Ford’s trademark smirk or swagger (let alone be forced to undergo make up or CGI as was done rather poorly in ROGUE ONE), he simply stayed true to the character and made it his own. Within a few minutes, I was on board and completely accepted him in the role, made all the easier by not constantly being reminded of how Harrison Ford would have played it. To each of their credit, Howard and Ehrenreich have created a perfectly believable young Han Solo that stands on his own two feet, not in the shadow of a legend.

Similarly, Don Glover (aka Childish Gambino) perfectly captured Lando Calrissian and at no point did I feel like I missed another legend in Billy Dee Williams (though I feel like Glover may have had some prosthetic teeth put in). Having to portray the dashing Lando in his prime provided Glover with the opportunity to bring greater depth to the character than Williams, who pretty much just played himself. Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton were both solid as far as their roles allowed them to be - as was Joonas Suotamo, for the first time reprising his role as Chewbacca (despite the subtleties of the Wookiee costume, not for a moment did I doubt it was the same character created by Peter Mayhew). Paul Bettany chewed the scenery as the slimy crime boss Dryden Vos. Wherever there is Bettany, Jon Favreau can’t be far behind, giving a short but charming life to the personable alien pilot Rio (bonus point for giving the universe a little more needed diversity). Also bringing her vocal talents to the fore was Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created one of the more sympathetic droid personalities in L3. Perhaps the only slightly disappointing performance came from the otherwise brilliant Emilia Clarke as Qi’ra, through no real fault of her own - despite playing a duplicitous badass, she wasn’t given much meaningful to do.

“Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”

The film is at its essence a heist movie, and a good one at that - it effectively uses the tropes of the genre, and though largely predictable it subverted them enough to keep me engaged the whole way through. The number of double crosses was just right enough to reflect that none of these characters were naive, but they all had their fundamental weaknesses.

I feel like Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan did a pretty decent job with the script. Having said that, while the plot overall was thrilling, the story itself was a little disjointed. Other than Han’s relationship with Qi’ra, there was no real thread that wove all the way through and connected the somewhat disparate few escalating heists that resulted in Han’s independence and acquisition of the Falcon. Perhaps that’s enough, given most of the second and third acts focused largely on the famous Kessel Run and its consequences - most amusingly, how the Falcon goes from Lando’s souped up, sleek hot rod, into the bucket of bolts we’re introduced to in A NEW HOPE.

The side plots involving the competing crime syndicates and the mysterious motivations of the marauders weren’t particularly compelling until they each revealed their secrets towards the conclusion - but they did an effective job of believable world building, and setting up things that we already know will follow (like the Rebellion). However, the ‘droid rights’ concept inspired by the new character of L3 seemed a little underdeveloped and out of place.(5) It actually reminded me more of Hermione Granger’s Elf welfare from Harry Potter mixed with Korg’s ‘revolution’ from Thor Ragnarok, though I’d love to see the idea more fully explored within the Star Wars universe.

The film introduced the concept of ‘hyperfuel’ (also known as coaxium) as the primary MacGuffin for driving the plotting of the heists. This acted as a deus ex machina at several points with some interesting results in the execution of the Kessel Run itself (Where were the spice mines by the way? Was Disney afraid of being sued by the estate of Frank Herbert?). While fine in isolation to this movie, this did also feel a little bit on the nose given the central role fuel bizarrely played in the plot of the last ‘Saga’ film (not to mention the ongoing focus on Han’s lucky gold dice, which was overplayed in that film and introduced here as if they were far more significant to Han’s established identity than they actually are).

But there was one final touch to the plot that got the kind of ecstatic reaction out of me that I haven’t felt in years - it genuinely shocked and thrilled me, but more on that later.

“I’m putting together a crew? Are you in?”

A good heist requires the building of a good crew that brings a variety of talents to the table. To be frank, the actual Kessel Run heist in this film itself was somewhat anticlimactic. Other than the diversion created by L3 and the subsequent fire fight, the stakes involved in boosting the coaxium from Kessel were not particularly high. On the other hand, the escape and ensuing ‘Run’,(6) as well as the inevitable series of double-crosses and competing moral and selfish imperatives after pulling it off, were full of thrills and gave the characters an opportunity to really shine through - and this was nothing if not a character piece.

The Anti-Hero: The eponymous Han Solo. Well, this is his movie, you can hardly expect us not to start with Han - who is for the first time the sole protagonist of a film. As this is an origin story, he’s not going to be leader of this pack, but he’s hopefully going to show us why he will be when he meets the Skywalker family. Despite a stray reference to his father being a shipbuilder on Corellia, we never get Han’s true family name or any other indication of his lineage; he was dubbed ‘Solo’ by the Imperial recruiter quite literally for being on his own.(7) We meet him as a street kid with a conscience and a mouth - who’ll happily point out to a superior officer in his company that they are themselves the hostiles, not the natives of the planet they’re invading for the glory of the Empire. Much like his father-in-law before him, he starts off idealistic and a little bit twee in his oft-repeated desire to become the best pilot in the galaxy (the title actually held by said future father-in-law). Also like Anakin Skywalker in PHANTOM MENACE, we don’t actually get to see a lot of those skills before he slips into the role; Anakin at least was a Force-sensitive pod racing child (let alone the Chosen One), but other than the pretty nice speeder chase opening the movie its’s not until the Kessel Run itself that we actually see Solo’s exceptional skills. Han in this film is very much driven by the loss of Qi’ra right at the start, and his quest throughout is to first find her and then win her back. Having seen his cynicism while Luke is under Obi-Wan’s tutelage, it’s a nice change to see him as the earnest student trying to learn the game from his own mentor, the master con-thief Tobias Beckett. He slots easily into the role of rogue, deserter and mercenary, and through Beckett and his crew he also learns never to trust anyone but himself - with one notable exception. And the fact that exception exists, is also why underneath all that bravado, Han truly is still the good guy - when given a choice between a quick score or the greater good, he chooses the latter. Han may start off street smart but somewhat naive, but by the end he demonstrates empathy and a canny insight that lays the foundation for the scruffy looking nerf herder with a heart of gold that Luke meets in the Mos Eisley Cantina. At the very end of the film, we can see conclusively why Han had to shoot first.(8)

The Brawn: Chewbacca. The one notable exception to Han’s rule is his future trusty co-pilot, who we’ve never yet seen not by his side. Here we get to see how they meet for the first time and forge their lifelong partnership. While I was fully expecting Chewie to show up at some point, I must admit to being misdirected by the set up leading to his meet-fight with Han. Howard’s staging suggested that the ‘beast’ the stormtroopers were feeding Han to would be something like RETURN’s Rancor and the muddy fur that was our first glimpse of him also echoed EMPIRE’s Wampa. Hearing that familiar growl was both thrill and relief, as Chewie engaged Han in ferocious combat until we hear Han speak Wookiee for the first time in order to persuade Chewie that he can devise a way for them both to escape.(9) The two are literally bound together until Han tracks down Beckett - who immediately recognises that Chewie, not Han, is the prized recruit. Han learns of Chewie’s desire to reunite with and free his tribe / family, something he can and can’t relate to at the same time. Chewie appears initially skeptical of Han, but circumstance conspires to keep them together from one job to the next and along the way they continually pull each other out of the kind of pickles that would well establish the life debt he later owes to Han (but nothing specific is singled out here as the sole cause for it). At a critical moment, we see Chewie choose to stay with Han rather than return to join others of his own kind. This cements the fact that Chewie isn’t simply sidekick, but that Han and Chewie are in fact partners in crime. It’s also probably the most agency we’ve seen Chewie use throughout the saga - except perhaps for the moment that we’d all been waiting for (and had been teased at least once with Beckett), when he finally pulls someone’s arms out of their sockets. He’s also the first to throw cold water on Han when he starts bragging about making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - as Chewie points out, he was already rounding it down.

The Money: Lando Calrissian. When we first met him on Cloud City, Lando presented as a smooth-talking, responsible administrator with shades of a dark past. Lando is just as charming as he ever was, but in his younger days we can see more of the conniving, selfish operator he needed to be to survive as a renowned smuggler in the galactic underworld. However, as with Han, a glimmer of his true nature shines through his relationship with L3, his partner in crime (and possibly life). While Lando’s side of that relationship wasn’t that well explored at first (other than L3 suggesting that he may be what Futurama would call “robosexual”), and it’s not clear how sympathetic he was to her robot rights crusade, it is clear following L3’s death just how much she meant to him.(10) In return for an ever-diminishing cut,(11) Lando provides the getaway vehicle for the heist - his highly-polished and specially-modified freighter, the Millennium Falcon. The Falcon we see for the first time(12) is pristine and complete, including the escape pod completing its front that we’ve as yet not seen. Having cheated Han out of his first opportunity to take possession of the Falcon, we see the foundations of the mistrust underlying their chummy rivalry, and the guile that Han brings back to the table to finally win it fair and square. Given the considerable damage Han does to the ship through the maelstrom to turn it into our beloved hunk of junk, it’s somewhat ironic that in RETURN Lando promises Han to bring the Falcon back from the Battle of Endor “without a scratch”.

The Beauty and the Brains: L3-37 and Qi’ra. I feel terrible conflating these two, particularly between the two female members of the crew, but unfortunately that’s the sort of movie this was. Qi’ra may have conceived of part of the scheme, and been the mastermind who ultimately ended up on top, but she didn’t actually have a whole lot do other than drive the plot. It’s arguable that she may have used her emotional leverage over Han to ensure that she always had the upper hand throughout most of the film. Perhaps hers is a character that has scope to grow over the course of a greater story, but in this chapter alone she felt a little underdeveloped; you never got a sense of why Han was so besotted with her, to the extent that he would spend years trying to get her back - and her convenient reappearance at just the right time was a little contrived. But I find it more interesting to look at L3 as the one who used her appearance and/or emotions most effectively to create a robot rebellion diversion to allow the heist to proceed, despite the fact that it was literally her brains that ultimately enabled the getaway. Unlike the prissy C3PO and the sardonic K2SO from ROGUE ONE, L3 is the first protocol droid we’ve encountered that is idealistic and empathetic, and she tolerates no nonsense from her beloved Lando or the rest of the crew. While her demise was somewhat inevitable, she’s probably the most ‘human’ droid to date across all of the Star Wars movies. The other resonant feature of L3 is that she literally becomes part of the Falcon, and is as such retconned into the Saga itself as the ‘peculiar dialect’ that always seems to bring bad news to C3PO.

The Leader: Tobias Beckett (and his partner Val). Beckett also doesn’t have much to do beyond driving the plot and be a representation of the mercenary that Solo would become - his Fedora Man - without the redeeming qualities. When Val vainly sacrifices herself to try to help Beckett settle the score to end his indebtedness to the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, he loses what little remaining connection and trust he had with others (at least, that’s what Beckett would have us believe). The challenge for Han will be not to do the same when Qi’ra walks away from him (or at least, not until he rescues a princess from a hidden fortress). Beckett is a ruthless mentor for the hungry young Han, but his commitment to making sure Han learns his lessons ends up being own weakness, resulting in his ultimate demise as Han catches him monologuing. Truly the student does become the master, with some regret but no hard feelings.(13)

The Competitor: Emphys Nest. Now this is an interesting character. Initially set up as a brutal marauder captain with a proto-Ren mask, it turns out that in fact she is the leader of a group of outcasts dispossessed by the Empire, who are not in the game for the money but for survival - and ultimately, rebellion. I found the the portrayal of the marauders and their motivation a little hard to follow at first, but ultimately far more believable and earned than the ‘resistance kids’ in the ‘Saga’. Also, I love the realism of the idea (reflected in the REBELS series) that there are disparate cells of resistance across the galaxy fighting their own wars against the Empire, who eventually coalesce into the organised Rebel Alliance. The fact that Warwick Davis’s PHANTOM MENACE cameo character Weazel returns as one of Nest’s lieutenants is icing on the cake.

The Heavy: Dryden Vos. I was fully expecting the boss of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate to be a Hutt, so it was a surprise to see an apparently humanoid villain instead.(14) Vos appears recklessly tyrannical and limitless in his arrogance. It’s hard to believe that he’s effectively just a middle manager, though he alludes to that fact along the way, setting us up for…

The Big Bad: Holy poodoo. Darth F’ing Maul (sorry, simply ‘Maul’ now that he’s ceded the mantle of Sith to the little brat watching him from the fighter cockpit). I could not contain my glee when I saw his horned face reappear. Now this is probably going to be confusing for the casual viewer, because most would have assumed that Maul was dead after Obi-Wan bisected him in PHANTOM MENACE. But those who have had the benefit of watching CLONE WARS and REBELS know that Maul survived and has tangled with our heroes (and even his former master) a number of times, all the while plotting his comeback and revenge against his almost-murderer Kenobi. Along the way, Maul and his brother Savage Oppress took over the alliance of criminal syndicates known as the Shadow Collective (of which Crimson Dawn is one part) and took control of the planet Mandalore (in the process killing Kenobi’s beloved Satine - yes, just like in MOULIN ROUGE). We also have had the benefit of seeing his final rematch with Obi-Wan on Tatooine, possibly one of the most meaningful duels of the saga. So with context, given CLONE WARS and REBELS are technically Canon, it’s unsurprising in a way that Maul would be revealed as the ultimate villain of the piece. Nevertheless, the reveal of seeing this iconic and criminally-underutilised antagonist once again in live action was simply breathtaking. Maul was portrayed by original PHANTOM MENACE actor Ray Park, and voiced by Sam Witwer. I was somewhat disappointment that the amazing Peter Serafinowicz didn’t return to reprise Maul’s voice, but given the substantially greater amount of work Witwer has done for the character since in CLONE WARS and REBELS, it’s fair to say that Witwer is now to Maul as Hamill is to the Joker.

“You look good. A little rough around the edges, but good.”

The rather unsurprising conclusion to all that is that this film has managed to meet and perhaps surpass, the bar I’ve set for what makes a good and enjoyable Star Wars movie.

Simply by virtue of the fact that they aren’t recreating the figurative wheel, Disney seems to do a much better job with these Star Wars anthology movies than the ‘Saga’ they are unnecessarily trying to continue (but in fact are simply rebooting). I really hope they take advantage of the favorable ages of Ewan McGregor and Daniel Logan to tell the Obi Wan and Boba Fett stories that are dying to be told, let alone find a way to bottle a tiny bit of Don Glover brilliance before he becomes bigger than Yeezus and stops acting altogether.(15)

At this stage we know that there will be at least two ‘spin-off’ trilogies, by Rian Johnson (ugh) and the Game of Thrones showrunners (Qi’ra returns?). If each of those manage to continue to follow the trend set by SOLO, and to a lesser extent ROGUE ONE, rather than the tired tropes of the ‘Saga’, then my outlook is optimistic on the future of Star Wars on the silver screen for years to come.

So for now: I’ll happily go see another Star War.

Notes:

(1) I’d add that despite sketching out a potential back story and cameo for an orphaned young Han Solo adopted by Chewbacca and present at the Battle of Kashyyyk in SITH, Lucas exercised restraint and omitted it from the shooting script. While not begrudging the creator his licence, it appears in hindsight that this was probably a wise move and certainly created an opportunity for this film.

(2) Actually, now that I read that back with decades of hindsight, I can totally relate!

(3) In this case, that line was Solo’s reference to the Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs - long maligned as an incorrect reference given that parsecs are units of distance not time, though there have been some novel explanations of how that might still work that were Canon-ised by this film.

(4) Actual narration may be brilliant, please see a theralyst if doubt persists. Speaking of which, I wonder (did someone say WONDER?) which still life image he used as inspiration for this movie?

(5) I feel like the galactic resentment towards droids was signposted a little more effectively indirectly by the prequels, given the years of destruction caused by the Separatists’ droid armies.

(6) Lando set the bar at 20 parsecs, which is way higher than what Han eventually claims he achieved. It makes you wonder about the significance of the “less than” part of the claim.

(7) It may as well have been “Corellian” or “Corleone”, for that matter.

(8) But let’s not blind ourselves to the fact that that says nothing about whether or not Greedo would have taken a shot too - Greedo already delivered his verbal coup de grace and allowed Han to get a response in before Han shot (back). Han’s mid-monologue blow to Beckett was more along the lines on Indiana Jones’s similar shot against the swordsman in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. As I said before, whether Greedo shot or not changes nothing about Han, who had already been preparing for the shot himself.

(9) It’s a shame we didn't get an allusion to how Han picked up his stuttering Wookiee language skills or knowledge of their Imperial enslavement - particularly given the fact that the reason probably would have further demonstrated his empathy - hat tip to my friend Justin Scott for that one.

(10) I’ll be honest - as a COMMUNITY fan, it’s always a joy to watch Don Glover cry hysterically.

(11) He can’t seem to avoid deals that get worse all the time!

(12) Technically we did see the Falcon briefly in SITH, but let’s say that Lando has done a bit of a refurbishment since then.

(13) There hasn’t been such an effectively executed succession plan since the soon-to-be Darth Vader got ‘ahead’ of Darth Tyranus.

(14) It appears that the Hutts are being set up as the antagonists for a future Solo movie.

(15) I still vainly hold out hope for #SixSeasonsAndAMovie.

#han solo #solo #star wars

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zutsuitriot · 7 years

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Genderbending Robin Hood Adventure Marian Flies True

While Robin Hood tales have run the gamut from swashbuckling adventure to serious romantic drama to winking parody to dancing foxes, a few constants remain as true as Robin’s shaft-splitting arrow: Robin Hood, master of both archery and disguise, leads his band of Merry Men to rob from the rich and give to the poor. But what if the real treasure that Robin loots from the privileged (that is, men) is opportunity and agency for everyone else (women and gender-nonconforming people)?

Oh, and Robin Hood was Maid Marian the entire time. It’s the kind of delightful twist that could have been the climax of another tale, but playwright Adam Szymkowicz makes it nearly the opening line of Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood. And suddenly, just like the anthropomorphic residents of Disney’s Sherwood Forest or the bellowing refrains of “Men in Tights” from Mel Brooks, a new lens is put into place, through which to reevaluate the familiar trappings of this archetypal tale.

Not that Flux Theatre Ensemble’s charming production disregards those familiar trappings: Will Lowry’s set places the audience in the middle of the action as if they had wandered into a Renaissance faire or made a reservation at Medieval Times; the pennants extending into the intimate seating at the New Ohio Theatre has a positively transporting effect. With Lowry having set the stage, Kelly O’Donnell’s excellent direction populates it with the players, their revolving door of entrances and exits the stuff of French farce.

Truth be told, the Robin Hood story is pretty formulaic: rob from the rich and give to the poor, win the archery contest, free the girl, humiliate Prince John. However, Marian brings new dimension to these beats: When lady archer Alanna Dale (Jessica Angleskahn) discovers Robin’s (Becky Byers) true identity as Marian, the rogue invites the lady to stuff her hair under a hat, dress in men’s clothes, and join the Merry Men hiding out in Sherwood Forest… where she promptly falls in love with Will Scarlett (T. Thompson) somewhere between their first sparring and first sentry shift.

Alanna’s initiation into the Merry Men is the tipping point to reveal that most of the Merry Men aren’t actually men, and that there are more than a few arrow-crossed lovers in the ranks. Maid Marian’s capture later in the play is almost secondary to all of the romantic dramas and identity conflicts unfolding; even the guards have affairs! With all of these secretive trysts and constant donning and doffing of disguises, Marian is less Robin Hood retelling than medieval sex farce, with couples snatching brief tête-à-têtes, on constant alert for a guard or Prince John or another Merry Man to walk in on them.

Which is not to say that makeouts are the only action: Marian boasts a number of balletic fight scenes (choreographed by Rocío Mendez) that highlight the bulk or grace of the respective fighters. In addition to these personal touches, there are some truly creative choices with regard to perspective, especially one sequence that involves scaling the castle wall. And I gasped every time an arrow came out of nowhere—that little detail really made me feel as if I were in a Robin Hood adventure.

An amusing aspect that this version retains is the famous romance between Robin and Marian, made even more hilarious by the fact that this “power couple” can never actually be seen in the same room together. Now that’s the kind of Noises Off shenanigans it would have been great to see. Though it’s worth pointing out that the double-casting of Mike Mihm as both Friar Tuck and the Sheriff of Nottingham achieves some of that winking humor: Both are lovers to lady-in-waiting Shirley (Nandita Shenoy), though it’s clear that she’s more smitten with the good Friar. The latter’s pillow talk is one of the play’s surprisingly deep moments, as they discuss the relative sinfulness of greed when it’s not coveting someone else’s possessions but simply wanting better for your own life.

It’s the kind of existential dilemma that Marian could weigh in on, but strangely, we never find out the why behind this genderbending plot twist: Did Marian dream up the Robin Hood persona, or was it bequeathed upon her, à la the Dread Pirate Roberts? How does she account for feminine inconveniences such as her period or the need for hair upkeep? Surely the Merry Men would notice if there were soiled sanitary napkins piling up around camp every month, or extra hairpins and chest bindings lying around. Did she decide to lead a double life because of shortcomings in her life as Marian; if so, why live half of her time as a noblewoman courting Prince John’s affections? Access, most likely, though we only get to see the tail end of one heist that she’s masterminded.

Perhaps my favorite facet of Marian’s character is her reverse-psychology utilization of “feminine wiles”: Whenever Prince John starts getting too handsy, she starts sweetly talking about her period, which has him twisting in revulsion even before she’s gotten into the nitty-gritty. All she has to do is remind this germaphobe prince about the not-so-fun parts of her genitals, and he’s lost any boner. As Prince John, Kevin R. Free is an absolute delight. Yes, he embodies the bumbling ruler through campy sashays and ridiculous cooing to a fake carrier pigeon. But for every shrill order there’s the converse, as he shifts into menacing by dropping an octave and pulling himself up to his full height, reminding you—oh shit, this is the man in charge, we’re in trouble.

Our own lack of access to Marian is somewhat mollified by Alanna frequently stepping outside of the narrative to deliver a running commentary on the action—a framing device that I found at times charming (“I don’t know this yet”) and other times excessive (considering the frequency with which she interrupted the action). As we’ve just learned that Robin isn’t who we thought he was, taking another step away from the archetypal character naturally loses some of the intimacy I was craving. Yet at the same time, it’s wonderful to see that Marian is the rule rather than the exception, to meet other women who possess the same pluck and spine. But Alanna is no mere audience insert; as a(nother!) slyly genderbent take on the minstrel Alan-a-Dale, who pops up in many a classic Robin Hood tale, she ably fulfills the duties of her predecessor.

Further, Alanna’s perspective—bookending moments with “This is my [concerned/in love/etc.] face”—taps into one of the play’s central themes: the duality of self. Prince John allows no one but concubines access to him in his most private moments. Shirley has the same “define the relationship” conversation with both of her paramours, down to the word, but the inflection couldn’t be more different. Just as he hides his sensitivity with brashness, Will Scarlett has a very specific persona he wants the world to see, genitals be damned. Little John (played to perfect sweet dumbness by Jack Horton Gilbert) reconciles his crush on Marian with his love and loyalty for his best friend Robin. Alanna knows that the face she turns toward the world is not reflective of what’s going on inside her head.

It’s a credit to Szymkowicz that Marian isn’t the only character struggling with two selves, but Becky Byers embodies that push-and-pull with aplomb. I’ve seen her age ten years in a day (in Mac Rogers’ The Honeycomb Trilogy), so I was delighted by the perfect casting. Though her chipper Robin, dressed in all green, sometimes leans more Peter Pan, further consideration has made me realize that it’s just a new take on the famous Robin Hood aloofness that makes him so inspiring but also so frustrating. Even when he’s giving so much in terms of riches, he gives away little of himself. Unfortunately, Marian is drawn less clearly; she invokes the same cheery deflection with Prince John, but we know little of her private self… except for one telling line, in a moment of somber self-analysis: “Some of us have to have less so all of us can have more.”

What Marian lacks in nuance, she makes up for as Robin Hood the figurehead, granting permission to everyone else to express their truest desires. The casting of mostly female and trans actors in the Merry Men brings to mind Jaclyn Backhaus’ Men On Boats, but in this case, the play explicitly addresses the queering of traditional notions of gender. The most touching example is that of Much the Miller’s Son (C. Bain), who confesses to the rest of the Merry Men that they don’t feel much like a man—or a woman, for that matter. They request that the name of the group be adjusted to account for not just cisgender men or women in drag (though, hilariously, no one actually knows about the women in their midst), and though no one actually understands why Much made this request, they don’t deny it. Bain’s part is small, but he imbues it with such gravity and earnestness that Much’s desires become intensely relatable.

With a 90-minute running time, Marian both moves too quickly in parts and drags in others, as the story seems designed to fit the timing instead of the other way around. We cover so much ground, with an ending that felt far too rushed in its attempts to both achieve closure but keep the myth going, that the overall effect of this particular story is lessened. In truth, Marian would make an amazing pilot of sorts, the first volume in an ongoing saga. I would love to see it live on as an ongoing series, like The Brick’s monthly soap opera It’s Getting Tired, Mildred or The Flea’s weekly #serials. That way, we could take on the role of Robin Hood’s audience night after night and week after week—right where he wants us.

Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood runs through Saturday, February 11 at the New Ohio Theatre. Click here to purchase a Living Ticket!

#theater reviews #Robin Hood #genderbending #Marian

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secretgamergirl · 5 years

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RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - The Origins of Magic

Previous entries in this series of posts:

The Planes

Alignment, Death, and Outsiders

The Actual, You Know, Setting

Today’s topic is something I think should really be the biggest preoccupation of any RPG campaign setting where it’s a concern, but one that most seem to gloss right over- Where the hell did all these spell casters come from? While I’m at it, I have officially decided that if I get a book out for all this, I’m going to include 4 PC classes (in addition to compatibility with all the existing options out there), covering the basics of Standard Party Composition and filling in some setting gaps here. Swashbuckler for a fighter type (never been happy with Paizo’s take on finesse-y fighters, might call it something else), single-school-focus wizards (gonna have to bust out the thesaurus for an unused name), divine casters who allow themselves to be possessed by agents of their deity (will likely come out like some kinda variant druid as a result), and something for the general rogue/bard 4th slot that’s a bit different that I’m tentatively calling The Party Mom Class.

Anyway, on with the magic origins. As I’ve already largely established, I think, most deities don’t really hold any direct sway over the prime material plane, and physical manifestation type stuff isn’t a thing. Divine casters of course open the door for all kinds of stuff, but you need to learn how to pray to your deity first, so as kind of a weird quirk I guess, every tradition of divine casters here is inherently rooted in arcane casters working out the whole astral projection thing, or people coming back from the dead having learned some things out there. The core deity list is something I’d really like to get some creative input on from practitioners of actual pantheistic religions, but I definitely want to get into the first follower of each once I get to listing them out, and how they came to be such.

So OK. Clerics come after wizards, but with wizards, there’s two things to worry about. They need some existing magic in the world to study, and they need a real good in-world reason to draw sharp divisions between different schools of magic. Well, OK NEED is a strong word. You could pretty much just merge everything together with no effect beyond it being a lot easier to look up spells by level and drop the whole school thing with little to no consequence, but I LIKE schools, so I need to rationalize them.

So my thinking is, every school of magic originally started as literally a different school, isolated from the others in a different part of the world, coming at the whole “magic” thing from a different angle. And this of course all only really applies to STUDIED magic. The whole concept of the prime material plane being painted with the inner planes used as a palette, coupled with the inner planes being inhabited just inherently means you’re going to have elementals and genies around from the beginning of time, along with dragons. And while I am writing out the whole concept of half-orcs and half-elves, all bets are off for people like ifrits and oreads and tieflings, so sorcerers are also going to be in play well before wizards.

So really, let me just put together a rough timeline on all things magic here:

Deities have just always been out there, with various outsiders forming as deaths happen and so on.

Elementals and anything else from the inner planes, while rare, have always been hanging out on the prime material, with half-mortal children following as soon as other creatures hit the table, really.

Dragons were probably one of the first types of creature to be created in the world, linnorms especially. And again, there’s some innate magic to them plus plenty of capacity for half-dragon children.

The first spellcasting class to really come about in the world though is going to be oracles. Oracles just happen after all. Mysterious circumstances of birth, ties to the great mysterious magic of the wold, no real teachers or questing or heritage involved. They’re rare though.

Sorcerers are next to hit the scene, because hey, after a few generations those half-genies and half-dragons are going to dilute down to bloodlines. Bloodragers come in at the same time, two sides of the same coin and I see it.

I’d go one further too and say all of the above predate even the basics of civilization. Which you do need at least a bit of to really get the ball rolling on the rest of the classes.

Druids come in next. A long secretive tradition of just trying to study and worship the natural world around them without bringing in any expectations, secretive order though, so they keep what they know to themselves. The more learned druids are probably going to work out some notion that there’s an afterlife thanks to reincarnate being a spell and all, but I don’t really see any other religious beliefs splintering off there. Just a weird thing to not think too hard about while you get used to being a dwarf woman or a boar or something

The first proper schools of magic I see springing up as people really start to settle down and invent systems of writing and social structures allowing for dedicated scholars are Evocation and Transmutation. Likely founded close enough together in terms of the actual date, but far enough away that nobody can really conclusively sort out the various calendars or lack thereof and be certain which came first. You’ve got raw elemental forces clearly evident as something magical because, again, elementals on the prime material plane are absolutely a thing, someone’s going to try to pin down how they work. Elves are out there routinely having their Doctor Who regenerations, along with the odd druid wildshaping, so, changing things around is equally likely to be stumbled across.

Alchemy begins as a tradition sometime after these, largely born out of a movement of skeptics seeing some of these early evokers and transmuters, trying to recreate what they do, maybe swiping some glances at spellbooks. Potions and recipes for them inherently spread around the world a bit faster than a bunch of nerds filling libraries in budding schools, too.

Next up, Necromancy. If humanity as a whole has people who can manipulate the elements, and make changes to people’s bodies out there, someone’s going to get it into their head to go all Full Metal Alchemist and work out exactly what’s so different about a living creature than a rock or something, and start some pretty depraved experimentation. Probably really focused on poisons and diseases at first, eventually getting some handle on the whole notion of souls and alternate forces that can animate a body, and eventually working up to the real serious game changer that is astral projection, and getting a handle on the whole notion of the outer planes.

One of the first proper divine casters is going to come along real shortly thereafter when some necromancer makes a new friend out there... and probably one of the nastier ones too. Like, when I have a pantheon nailed down and need to have a real proper “this is just the WORST deity who needs to seriously be fought against, probably the first to make contact with humanity.

So now we have this divine class I’m working on, followed shortly by clerics. And evil outsiders possessing people and corpses and generally making things less than great, along with giving the whole school of necromancy kind of a bad name for opening that up.

Tieflings naturally follow, and some more bloodlines of course.

Enchantment is the next school to be founded, because we have all these outsiders around now to give examples of how charms and profane gifts and such work to use as a model.

Illusion follows, kind of a parallel development, again, there’s a lot to learn from studying evil outsiders.

At this point in the history of the world, magic is going to have a pretty bad reputation in general, but hey, fight fire with fire, right?

Next out the gate though is bards and skalds. There’s 5 schools of magic out there in the world, so naturally you’re going to have people trying to pay them all a visit, learn a few handy tricks, pick up a lot of other esoteric knowledge as they go, and tell a good story. This also helps really spread the whole magic notion to any parts of the world who haven’t been paying it much attention.

So, the other schools are going to all spring up in bursts, as new eyes get on the whole magic concept. Abjuration to try and avoid dealing with the dangers of other forms of magic (and consequently, one with very few pure practitioners, nice to know at least a few other spells to know how to counter them). Conjuration largely as a fusion of the theories behind Necromancer and Evocation to see what can be pulled out of these other planes without the nastier baggage. Divination largely as a means of working out what’s up out there, and Psychic magic as a sort of alternate take on the whole thing, building up inner strength against these things, tied to monks culturally.

Other religious practices and paths to power are going to spring up along the way, fuzzier to pin down what crops out when without a full pantheon nailed down or major nations of the world. Shamans are probably about as old as druids, similar mindset involved. Witches probably crop up shortly after learning about some of the more powerful outsiders, with experimentation on how to get in touch with such without all the possession and astral projection and so on, and informed by some of the more naturalistic magic practices.

And while I do like the concept of the world’s first interaction with divine powers being on the grimdark side, I would think the rest of the pantheon would get in touch with people pretty soon after. Plenty of other necromancers to astrally project, learn what else is out there, make contact with other deities and outsiders. Divination is another gateway. Religious traditions that don’t involve spell-granting deities are going to precede all of this, and some practicioners on learning about this class I’m creating are probably going to try going receptive on blind faith, getting in touch with outsiders with similar sensibilities.

Then as we get closer to the present day of course, the trade in magic bards got started is going to get books on at least the basics propagating all over the world beyond these few founding schools so regular ol’ wizards with a full range of spells are now the most common by far, magi pick up enough to pair with swords. Arcanists to really go all turbo-nerd and try to break down theoretical fundamentals underpinning everything. Churches get big and militant enough for paladins, inquisitors, war priests. Anything I’m forgetting here?

Oh, and ironically enough, the creator god I’m calling Brin as a placeholder, despite having the most obvious visible impact on the world from the dawn of time is one of the last to really get a formal church. They don’t need mortal agents to influence things, they don’t have any reason to care what happens with anyone’s souls, and they aren’t based out in the outer planes, Really they’re a bit like Paizo’s Groetus in terms of ”why would anyone pick you to formally worship?”

#game design #worldbuilding #rpg campaign setting #d&d

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