#*・° ✦ 。 ( roleplays)

[probablybadrpgideas]

The Monster Manual but it's blatantly written by the monsters

[prokopetz]

Imagine a person who only consumes Batman-related media. That is, they only watch movies and TV shows that have Batman in them, only read books that are novelisations of Batman media, only play licensed Batman video games, and so forth. This is not so absurd an idea; Batman-related media is sufficiently popular, varied and widespread that restricting one's media consumption in this way is completely feasible. However, I trust we can agree that if you actually do this, you will be left with very strange ideas about what popular media looks like.

The next step in this analogy is undestanding that if the only tabletop RPG you're acquainted with is Dungeons & Dragons, you have the same grasp of the tabletop roleplaying hobby as our hypothetical Batman Guy has of popular media.

[sothisisablog]

[psycheterminal]

Treat anything on Discord as media that will be lost

Do not use Discord to host your files. Do not rely on Discord to preserve your text. DO NOT RELY ON DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PRESERVATION OR HOSTING!!

It CAN be lost, it WILL be lost! You must consider Discord as a part of the Core Internet, controlled by one company that hosts the servers.

I thought it was impressive at first that it replaced IRC, but now I am horrified. If the company behind Discord went under today, how many friends would you lose?

How many relationships? How much writing?

You may think this won't happen, but I remember when AIM went down and along with it, entire novels worth of interaction with my oldest friend.

IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. NO COMPANY IS INFALLIBLE.

Back up your files! Download anything you've saved to Discord NOW, before the API changes go into effect! And DO NOT RELY ON THEM FOR HOLDING IMPORTANT FILES!

[julius-caeser]

Boys night on the 15th of March, in the senate! so excited so hang out with the boys, heard theres cake, hope someone brought a knife.

[maelancoli]

Writing Intimacy

i often see writers sharing a sentiment of struggling with writing kiss scenes which honestly bleeds into other portrayals of physical intimacy. i see it a lot in modernized styles of writing popularized by the recent trend in publishing to encourage short, choppy sentences and few adverbs, even less descriptive language. this makes intimacy come across awkward, like someone writing a script or clumsy recounting of events rather than a beautiful paragraph of human connection.

or just plane horniness. but hey, horny doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with poetic or sensual.

shallow example: they kissed desperately, tongues swirling and she moaned. it made her feel warm inside.

in depth example: she reached for the other woman slowly and with a small measure of uncertainty. the moment her fingers brushed the sharp, soft jaw of her companion, eliza's hesitance slid away. the first kiss was gentle when she finally closed the distance between them. she pressed her lips lightly to gabriella's in silent exploration. a tender question. gabriella answered by meeting her kiss with a firmer one of her own. eliza felt the woman's fingers curling into her umber hair, fingernails scraping along her scalp. everything inside eliza relaxed and the nervousness uncoiled from her gut. a warm buzz of energy sunk through her flesh down to the very core of her soul. this was right. this was always where she needed to be.

the first complaint i see regards discomfort in writing a kiss, feeling like one is intruding on the characters. the only way to get around this is to practice. anything that makes you uncomfortable in writing is something you should explore. writing is at its best when we are pushing the envelope of our own comfort zones. if it feels cringy, if it feels too intimate, too weird, too intrusive, good. do it anyway! try different styles, practice it, think about which parts of it make you balk the most and then explore that, dissect it and dive into getting comfortable with the portrayal of human connection.

of course the biggest part comes to not knowing what to say other than "they kissed" or, of course, the tried and true "their lips crashed and their tongues battled for dominance" 😐. so this is my best advice: think beyond the mouth. okay, we know their mouths are mashing. but what are their hands doing? are they touching one another's hair? are they scratching or gripping desperately at one another? are they gliding their hands along each other's body or are they wrapping their arms tightly to hold each other close? do they sigh? do they groan? do they relax? do they tense? are they comfortable with each other or giddy and uncertain? is it a relief, or is it bringing more questions? is it building tension or finally breaking it?

get descriptive with the emotions. how is it making the main character/pov holder feel? how are they carrying those emotions in their body? how do they feel the desire in their body? desire is not just felt below the belt. it's in the gut, it's in the chest, it's in the flushing of cheeks, the chills beneath the skin, the goosebumps over the surface of the flesh. everyone has different pleasure zones. a kiss might not always lead desire for overtly sexual touches. a kiss might lead to the desire for an embrace. a kiss might lead to the impulse to bite or lick at other areas. a kiss could awaken desire to be caressed or caress the neck, the shoulder, the back, the arms etc. describe that desire, show those impulses of pleasure and affection.

of course there is the tactile. what does the love interest taste like? what do they smell like? how do they kiss? rough and greedy? slow and sensual? explorative and hesitant? expertly or clumsily? how does it feel to be kissed by them? how does it feel to kiss them?

i.e. examine who these individuals are, what their motives and feelings are within that moment, who they are together, what it looks like when these two individuals come together. a kiss is not about the mouth. it's about opening the door to vulnerability and desire in one's entire body and soul.

[kindinb00]

[maximumzombiecreator]

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

[cosmicwhoreo]

Doodled some Caine because he seems like a fun guy+ Pomni being presumably Pomni-

[probablybadrpgideas]

Circle of protection against capitalism

[prokopetz]

Given how much of feline play and social behaviour are imitative in character, I feel like it shouldn't come as a surprise to gamers that their cats want to roll the shiny math rocks, too. Like, you demonstrated that this is a form of play and let them watch you do it. They're participating!

[kirk-hammett-bl0g]

Eyeballs!

[secretsimpleness]

Inquisitor Orlesians-Can-Burn-In-A-Ditch-For-All-I-Care Lavellan. + Josephine, Leliana, some noble / Dragon Age Inquisition (c) Bioware

[tibby-art]

??

[thesexymutant]

I kissed him so he would shut up.

Totally.

Artist: https://x.com/vanreito?s=21