mosstheboar - Tumblr blog

[mosstheboar]

🌤️ Share your favorite mechanic from a game you’re working on.

I have a lot of mechanics in Eureka that I really really really love and have hardly seen anything similar to them anywhere else, but for the purposes of this ask I’m going to be answering with one of the unique ones that we haven’t talked about on here yet: The Woo Roll.

The Woo Roll is a special roll named in honor of director John Woo, well-known for his bombastic and extravagant use of practical effects in shootout scenes. Eureka boasts exciting and realistically dangerous firearms combat, and what better way to make deadly firearms combat more exciting in a theater-of-the-mind or grid-based shootout than by adding flavor and flare that emulates Hardboiled?

Firstly, it should be noted that it’s actually relatively hard to hit a target in Eureka firearm combat, doing so requires a fairly high roll. That means that participants are going to be doing a lot of missing. Besides just having a higher Firearms skill, the best way to increase one’s chance to hit is by firing more bullets in a single turn in the hopes that at least one of those shots will roll high enough to hit, which is why automatic weapons are more powerful than others: It usually only takes one single bullet hitting to disable a human target, so even with a low Firearms skill, firing more bullets at once greatly increases the chance that at least one will hit.

However, realistically, most shootouts in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy will be done using semi-automatic pistols, which are only capable of firing a maximum of 2 shots per turn. We don’t want to make our combat be just and endless boring montra of “shoot, miss, shoot, miss, shoot, miss”.

So, how do we make missed shots fun?

The answer is the Woo Roll.

The Woo Roll is one of the few rolls in Eureka that doesn’t use 2D6, it only uses 1 D6.

(Quick note for those unaware: While Eureka is NOT a PbtA game, it does use a similar system of “Failure, Partial Success, and Full Success”, three possible outcomes of a dice roll instead of just Success and Failure.)

When firing a gun, all bullets fired that turn are rolled separately (we have a special speed-rolling system for when you’re firing more than 3 bullets in one turn but that’s a different post). A Full Success(10+ on a 2D6 roll) is required to hit the intended target with any given bullet, a Partial Success(7-9) and a Failure(2-6) both miss. But this is where the Woo Roll comes in.

I’ll let the actual Eureka rulebook take it from here.

As you can see here, missed shots in Eureka still have some effect on the environment and situation, even if they do not kill their intended target. This ensures that a roll in firearm combat will always do something even if it is a miss, and reminds the players of one of the fundamental rules of gun safety: Don't just be sure of your target, be sure of what's behind your target! High-velocity lead doesn't stop being destructive just because it flew a little too far to the left!

The fact that a Woo Roll is much more likely to have a negative result if the shoot was a Failure vs a Partial Success means that handing someone a gun who has no idea how to use it can be more of a hazard than a benefit, but it's not impossible for them to get that one lucky shot that makes the difference. Likewise, a Woo Roll made from a Partial Success still has a small chance to cause disaster, so even very skilled shooters have to consider whether it's worth the risk to start firing bullets all over the place at all.

We also have tables the Narrator(Game Master) can roll on just in case the shootout runs out of Woo Roll Elements or it happens in place where no Woo Roll Elements would realistically be. Here's a sneak peak at the table for Negative Woo Rolls.

Note also that this is a 2D6 table, meaning that the results closest to 7 are much more likely than the results farthest from 7.

[mosstheboar]

I actually love hearing about reformed people's stories. I love hearing about people who were in toxic communities or people who used to objectively be dickheads talking about how they got out of that. How they made themselves better.

I hate how most people's initial reaction to stories like that are things like:

"How could you have ever done those things?!" "Oh my god, you believed those things?!" "Well it doesn't un-do the harm you did!"

People incessantly advocate for change but then refuse to allow people who have changed the grace of being acknowledged and given opportunities and chances.

I love hearing about ex-antis talking about how they don't spend their days being angry and sending death threats anymore.

I love hearing about ex-homophobes who realized there's no magic law about what is "natural."

I love reformed bullies talking about how they made amends with their victims and spend their days being considerate of others.

You can't scream about wanting people to change but then expect them to spend the rest of their lives stuck in the past and on who they used to be. You can't expect people to spend the entire rest of their lives grovelling and apologizing and demeaning themselves.

Instead of clinging to who they were, latch onto who they are.

Ask how they got out of it. Commend them on changing. Enjoy that there's one less cause of harm in the world.

[mosstheboar]

Inadvisable tabletop RPG premise #137: semi-competitive one on one Soulslike pastiche where one participant takes on the role of the semi-amnesiac undead knight and the other takes on the role of the incongruously barefoot FromSoft level-up maiden. Neither participant is exactly a player or exactly a GM, with each having narrative authority over different aspects of the world and being bound by different game-mechanical constraints. The semi-competitive aspect of the premise stems from the fact that each participant is aiming for a different, mutually incompatible "ending", probably randomly assigned from a pool of around twelve, and neither participant knows which ending the other is trying to achieve.

[mosstheboar]

[mosstheboar]

[mosstheboar]

We need to bring back the athletics body type post

[mosstheboar]

tbh???? chickens are the best pets??

they

wag their tails (yes!!! like dogs!!!! they do it when they are exited or happy)

love eating treats and love whenever you pretend to peck things

get very attached to certain ppl, will think ur their mom

run around like dinosaurs??????? i don’t know if this is just my chickens but they are very dramatic when they run??

make VERY weird noises,,, like honking, purring, clucking, and peeping (soft peeping, they still think they are baby chicks)

will give you lots of pretty feathers 

eat bugs

you can pet them, v soft

like a tiny pet dinosaur

[mosstheboar]

[mosstheboar]

Behold, birds who have lost the ability to can!

Just kidding, guys.  These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants.  I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury!  Your chemical defenses are now my own!  Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants.  It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.

This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in.  One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers.  They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes.  The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”

They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying.  Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.

Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers.  Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior.  Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.

[mosstheboar]

lahore pigeons are some of the most visually appealing birds out there. like in terms of visual design. very minimalist, good contrast.

[mosstheboar]

Source If you want more facts, follow Ultrafacts

[mosstheboar]

Let’s talk about Nightjars

they are these wonderful tiny predatory birds

With great camouflage for multiple environments

And lovely plumage dependent on their species

BUT BEST OF ALL IS THEIR MOUTHS, which look small then their beaks are closed (they’ve even got cute lil’ whiskers!)

BUT ARE ACTUALLY HUUUUGE

BEST BIRD

[mosstheboar]

owls are bullshit and here’s why

[mosstheboar]

We visited some sort of museum for modern arts today and i got inspired

[mosstheboar]

A perfect duet.

[mosstheboar]

when you’re 47 au’s deep into your maladaptive daydreaming and someone forces you back into this threshold of reality by engaging you in social interaction

[mosstheboar]

Look at this beautiful boy