#Basically I want Unprepared Casters in game form

[thefatfemme]

(hope you don't mind OP, just wanted to include your tags for context)

I love this take. I don't entirely believe Bioware fully realizes it at this point, or at least they haven't verbalized the series' overarching themes in this way, but they need to so they can do it better. This is a series about the inevitable march forward, empires rise and fall and change the world and in the end no one really remembers, life just keeps going until the moments you thought etched in stone are less than specks on the horizon. Your choices matter within each game, in the immediacy of the moment, but like all history they are flattened and forgotten as time moves on. Nothing matters but it *all* matters, you understand? Dragon Age is about how one person or one small group can simultaneously do so much, have such an impact on the world, and yet barely leave a scuff behind. Bioware just needs to listen to Dolly Parton and do it on purpose.

Mfw the game about the futility of choice and the horror of living in an oppressive system where individual actions can do very little even when well intentioned isn't narratively important in its minutae a decade+ after its close

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 79 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch is establishing the official United States of Fuck Imperialism which is like the UN but actually does stuff, plus he has to deal with the fact that CC’s lost her memory and is acting like a demure slave girl harem choice from a VN. Charles is still trapped in the Human Instrumentality Shadow Realm so everyone figures this is a great time to unify everyone against Britannia. Kallen beats the shit out of Suzaku for being a dick to her all this time and the Knight of Ten is making his rounds because they realize they forgot to give him any buildup and he’s going to be a miniboss later so they have to cram all his being a dick personality into like five minutes while all the Knights of the Round assemble to prepare for an attack on Japan once the National Federation is formed. Llyod and Cecile for some reason enhanced the Guren for Suzaku even though he’s clearly more used to the Lancelot but apparently they enhanced it too much and made it a death machine like the Talgeese in Gundam Wing so Suzaku has to stick with the Lancelot. Looks like the Guren will have to sit and collect dust unless a certain pilot is rescued and then immediately has a convenient upgrade. Amazingly all the countries go along with everything Zero says and give up their militaries and have the Black Knights be the official military of the Federation. I don’t know how that works given that the Black Knights have been struggling to fight off one nation’s military idk how it’s supposed to substitute for a dozen nations’ military but I guess they conscript support and troops from the other nations or something. Charles comes back on the tv after the Federation is formed and is all “Awww what a cute little UN you have, fuck off bro.” which you’d think this’d be the perfect time for him to just out Lelouch as Zero and wreck the Black Knights’ morale but he doesn’t for some reason and they’re just gonna fight. Lelouch is freaking out and knows that having everyone want to murder the Britannian royal family includes Nunally so he calls Suzaku who just straight up goes “Bro cut the crap are you Zero or not?” and after so much plotting and scheming Lelouch just comes right out with it. Suzaki agrees to protect Nunally as long as Lelouch meets him alone at the Kururugi Shrine where this all began.

Inuyasha: This is another one of those Modern Day filler episodes which are always fun. There’s just something about Inuyasha running around in modern Japan being Spider-Man and saving people and catching bank robbers on the way to deliver Kagome’s lunch that’s so thoroughly entertaining. Basically Inuyasha spends this whole episode jittery that everyone’s so chill and ready to relax after Naraku just got away and is probably an inch from death but after a big adventure in the modern era where Kagome is as usual unprepared for her test, he ends up passing out on the bed after insisting a little battle with Naraku wouldn’t exhaust him. It’s a really cute little episode to let everyone bide some time and reflect on the past arc now that we’re starting a new wave of filler before we get to the Band of Seven and Mt. Hakurei stuff.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The first match of the tournament is about to begin and Botan, Shizuru, and Keiko come in with Koenma who is sick of baby jokes and puts on his bishonen disguise to impress everyone. There’s some neat lore about how they gave Koenma the guest team every year to bribe him into not shutting down the tournament without giving him anything of value and how the bloody show of the Dark Tournament pacifies the demons so they kill fewer humans, so that’s cool. Since Yusuke is still passed out, Kuwabara is de facto Captain and decides on simple one on one matches while the other team Captain just kinda roasts an eight of the crowd to see if it’ll wake Yusuke up. Kuwabara’s in the first match versus Prototype Killua, complete with afterimages and yo-yo tricks. They size each other up for a while and Kuwabara shrugs off getting his fucking neck broken surprisingly well while they go back and forth with “Well I can track YOU better” for a while. Togashi really loves his yo-yos of death so those have Kuwabara on the ropes and turn him into a fucking kite ready to slam back down into the arena, so yeah, Kuwabara’s having a rough time of it.

Fate Zero: Waver’s been having strange dreams about Iskandar, and not the ones people usually have about him. So he goes to get a basic history lesson on the historical figure that’s been chilling on his couch for a few weeks and spending all his money on xbox live arcade. They also go through all the ridiculously obvious historical inaccuracies and Iskandar’s just like “idk bro, I’m here so the book must be wrong” which is hilarious because Fate also does this with more modern historical figures that we have pictures of and shit so they basically sit there saying all historians have no idea what they’re talking about and gaslighting the field of history as a whole. On the way back Waver’s upset that Iskandar’s so awesome that it basically takes any effort on his part to win and it won’t be an actual achievement despite the fact that they’ve taken out like… one servant, MAYBE, and most of the other historical figures are equally over the top. But still Iskandar says that if your aspirations are big enough it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, everyone’s tiny in the grand scheme of things and clawing at greatness you can’t truly perceive is what matters. Also Caster and his boy have found the wreck they made of their workshop of dead bodies and are kinda fucked up about it but also ready to fuck up more people because God sucks or some shit. So Caster summons a Bloodborne monster which you think more people would notice and mention during Shirou’s time, like nobody in UBW ever said “Hey remember like seven years ago when a giant Bloodborne monster appeared in the river?” so I’m guessing there’s some kind of perception blocking going on. But yeah everyone’s gonna jump on the Bloodborne Monster next time for the season premiere.  

Konosuba: So we pick up where we left off and Kazuma is working off his debt by… killing more toads. Wow this world really is like a video game, we get the same five enemies over and over again. However they’re fucked without Darkness throwing herself into monster orifices looking for a good time so Yunyun has to save them. We already met Yunyun in the OVA so it’s kinda weird to be re-introduced to her here in basically the same way but their relationship is basically like Gai and Kakashi if they only did the lame dorky challenges Kakashi suggested when he’s too lazy to think of a good one. Also there’s a cat now, I don’t think that really comes to anything, just a scene of Megumin going “we have a cat now” and everyone’s like “kay”. Kazuma and Megumin play Naked Chicken to see who can get more naked before the other backs down and end up taking a bath together because they’re both stubborn assholes. Also we get a quick snippet of Yunyun and Megumin’s backstories which you can basically make Yunyun’s the swing scene from Naruto (idk why Yunyun is bring out the Naruto references in me today) and Megumin is stealing bread like Les Miserables in increasingly bizarre and disgusting ways because she’s ridiculously poor or some shit.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out that Usagi and Mamoru BOTH had their shots with the ‘fucks everything up’ sword with a pocketwatch and… the discarded gems of the four knights? Idk how that works given they were humans and also dead but what baffles me more is that both Usagi and Mamoru very obviously did not get hit by the sword but decided to fall down dead and not move for a couple minutes despite their shots very much being blocked and there being no blood. Anyway Queen Metalia has the crystal, bullshit is happening, 1000 years of darkness, you’ve seen Xiaolin Showdown, you know the drill. The remaining four Guardians get a cute little flashback of Usagi saying what she likes about them and then they give up their lives to revive her inside the dark energy blob of Queen Metalia and crystals and lights and shit happens and swords and wands are pulled out of nowhere and you know how a final boss goes, they beat it with the power of believing in themselves and shit like that. Also apparently the only difference between sealing Metalia away and killing her is hitting the giant bullseye on her forehead so yeah, hopefully she’s down for good this time. I don’t want to complain because this show was genre-defining but it’s hard to find things to say about something so generic and milktoast, it’s the Seinfeld problem where there’s been so many more interesting iterations that it’s just kinda “get on with it already” at this point. The only real markedly noticeable thing about it is how plainly and unashamedly it is about being a power fantasy for teen girls, and there’s something to that, harmless power fantasies can be fun but it just feels like the physical mechanics of this kind of progression being “She feels this shit REALLY HARD” is less exciting than some of the alternatives

Durarara!!: It’s the big Masaomi backstory episode and we get the whole deal of how he formed the Yellow Scarves and got into a relationship with Saki because Izaya wanted to orechestrate a gang war because that’s what Izaya does all day is orchestrate gang wars. It’s kind of amazing how many kids in this show are like “I don’t know how it happened but one thing led to another and suddenly I was at the head of one of the largest gangs in the city” like they kinda really yadda yadda over how that actually happens. But anyway Saki gets hurt in the gang war and Kadota’s gang has to save her because Masaomi’s adrenaline wears off at the last second and he can’t try and rush in and save her. I mean Dota’s van got there first anyway so how much he’d have been able to help would be doubtful but he feels bad about not even being able to try and Izaya says that fear and failure of his past will dominate his future actions which is exactly what he’s doing by letting his paranoia and frustration lead him to a war on the Saika army. Dota-chin tells him to face up to it and stop running or live with the shame of lying to Saki but Masomi can’t do that and his shame and determination to reverse the situation leads everyone into chaos as Anri discovers his secret.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hey do you have any advice for DM's or players? My friends and I are fairly new to this and I would appreciate any advice! Sorry for the bother

IN FACT I DO.  Now, again, my DM style could generously be called “freewheeling” and “unprepared” so like...go elsewhere if you want to learn The Numbers.  (Can someone explain how to use challenge rating usefully to design my encounters please I’m begging.)  However.

IN GENERAL

DnD is a collaborative effort.  I’m gonna harp on this one a little, but seriously.  DnD, or any other RPG, is a group effort.  That means everyone should be having fun, no single person should be controlling everything, no one should be wildly out of tone with the others, and no one should be playing with the intent to fuck over the group.  

Host provides the snacks.  Traditionally this is the DM, and it’s still sort of generally agreed that, in lieu of a host, the DM is still Snack Bearer, but no matter who you are, if you’re hosting DnD then give your party something to eat.  This is partly because there’s a long history of enjoying a salty snack while killin’ dragons, and partly because your average DnD session runs three or four hours and if you don’t eat a meal immediately beforehand or provide snacks, people will get pretty cranky at some point.  Everyone needs to be thinking clearly while they fight Y’gathon the Ravenous or whatever.

Loosen up a little.  Playing pretend feels awkward at first, and there’s an inclination to make the whole thing a joke as a defense against feeling like you’re being a dumbass.  And you’re totally free to make your campaign as goofy and joke-filled as you want!  But also try to embrace your character, try to embrace the fantasy world, try to just generally set aside the need to be a “grown up” and just play pretend.  Especially if you’re looking to hit some emotional beats, or hit a more serious note than “dick jokes, the DnD party”, it’ll take a little doing to get people to stop feeling shy and awkward about it.  This is going to come up again in the DM section.

PLAYERS

Party balance does matter--yeah, seriously.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t play exactly the character you want to play!  Make that dark elf prince DeviantArt OC you swore would never see the light of day!  Indulge your lifelong desire to Animorph--Druids do that!  Give your character the angstiest backstory and the most overdramatic appearance you’ve ever discarded for Real Writing!  The world is your oyster!  But if you party doesn’t have at least a healer and maybe at least one person with more than fifteen hit points (looking at you, All Spellcaster Parties), you may find yourself in a bit of a pinch and your DM may not be sympathetic.  If your group is big enough, I’d suggest trying to hit the classic four-person RPG starter party at bare minimum: Healer, Tank, Rogue, Damage-dealer (probably a caster).  That’ll cover most situations, both in and out of combat.  Get creative from there.  If you don’t have enough people (party of three), see if your DM will give you an NPC to fill out that roster--if they won’t, maybe drop the healer and blow 100% of your cash on healing potions.  IDK, that’s not my problem.  Which brings me to...

There’s no such thing as a boring class.  I know, I know, some dude’s about to show up and give me a bunch of crap about paladins.  I know.  But honestly there are so many options to mod the fuck out of DnD classes that everyone needs to calm down.  Homebrew your shit and stop whining.  Specifically, this is regarding two categories: Tank and Healer.  Nobody wants to be the guy casting Punch when everyone else can cast Wall of Fire, or making sure that your delicate little thief doesn’t get one-shotted before they can net those sweet sweet Sneak Attacks, but honestly the builds are still pretty fun.  If your cleric build is boring you, look for a cleric build that’s more interesting!  If you don’t like the classic Fighter or Barbarian, rummage around in the alternative paths!  Especially the 5e builds have a lot of really cool options right there in the Player’s Handbook, and if those aren’t doing it for you, the Internet has your back.  Finally, if what you really want is to be able to just fucking 1v1 the boss or to be Deeply Beloved by your party, Tank and (useful) Healer are your respective tickets to those outcomes.  And if you really, really still want to be an arcane spellcaster, try a Warlock for your kinda delicate tank and a Bard for your healer.

Don’t play to sabotage.  This sounds obvious, but this is “it’s a collaborative effort” for players, and it’s extremely important.  You shouldn’t be playing to sabotage the group and you shouldn’t be playing to sabotage the DM.  It’s not going to endear you to them, it’s not going to be funny, and it’s probably going to make your party turn on you in-game at some point, at which point it won’t even be fun for you.  If you’re not going into DnD with the honest desire to have a good time and do your best to work with everyone so you all have a collective good time, then let me ask for the sake of your future party that you maybe...don’t.  As far as the DM goes, your DM puts a lot of work into your sessions!  Probably more than you’re aware of!  That doesn’t mean you have to let them put your campaign on rails, but it does mean you shouldn’t go out actively looking for ways to upend their work.  That’s just rude.

Share the spotlight.  You’re not always going to be the center of attention.  Learn to love the other characters in your party and get invested in their arcs!  Build emotional connections between your character and the others, so that when they get plot advancement, you get plot advancement!  Above all, don’t try to hurry things along so that the narrative gets back to you, if someone else is getting a moment in the sun.  A good DM will get to everyone.  Just go with it.

You’re gonna have a dump stat--make it narratively interesting.  A “dump stat” is that one stat you put your lowest ability score into and subsequently become known for being Absolutely Shit with.  Mine is almost always Charisma.  My mother is playing a Barbarian: her character is as dumb as a sack of hammers, with the Intelligence score to match.  Play into that dump stat!  In fact, play into all your stats!  Why is your character so uncharismatic--are they brusque or just shy?  What part of their backstory informs that?  Why are they buff (Strength) and tough (Constitution)?  How did they decide to get that way?  Why do they have the skills you chose for them?  Stats aren’t just numbers on a page, they’re the core of the character you’re building, so make them part of the story.  And on a related note, my final bit of player advice...

Give! Your! Character! A! Backstory!  Your character DID NOT spring fully formed from the ether (I mean, unless, of course, they did, which is a pretty interesting backstory to be going on with), and the more you buff out your character’s backstory and tell your DM about it, the more they’ll be able to work you into the story they’re telling.  I would personally suggest having, like, a couple people who might still be alive out of that backstory, so that your DM has some easy stuff to work with, but bare bones you need to answer the question “why are you [CLASS] and what event brought you to that?”

DM (Under the cut because, like, trade secrets and also this is pretty long already)

You are all-powerful.  Not even the rules can tell you what to do.  If you want elevators, include elevators.  If you want to include house rules, distribute those motherfuckers and use them.  If you want a nat 20 to always, always succeed, regardless of circumstances, then it always succeeds, no questions.  If you like the Dawn War pantheon but not the Dawn War universe, stuff some deities in your pockets and make a hasty escape to your homebrew setting.  You are the DM and at the end of the day, nobody can stop you from changing the rules to suit you.  This means that, if you don’t know the rules as well as you would like to, a confident tone of voice and some degree of consistency is just as good!  It also means that, until you say it aloud, absolutely everything is in flux--if your characters just are not making progress on the mystery you set up and are continuously interrogating the wrong people, you’re totally free to just give one of those people some relevant information!  It’s easy to feel beholden to whatever you previously decided on, but seriously, you’re a god, you can just change stuff to make it work.  On the other hand...

You are ultimately responsible for the narrative--and therefore everyone’s good time.  That might sound like a lot of pressure, but it’s the truth.  With great power comes great responsibility.  This means not abusing your power as DM to target someone, to manipulate events to match your preferred outcome, or to dramatically alter the narrative your players are constructing.  Ultimately, you are there to give them a sandbox, they’re not here to play out your story.  Sometimes in order to let your players do what the party really wants to do, you need to give up some narrative threads that you spent time and effort plotting out.  That’s not to say it’s never worth it to put things on rails--especially in shorter campaigns, a party might really benefit from the DM keeping them on track--but a narrative will always be more fun if you build it together, rather than trying to sabotage their attempts to keep them to your planned path.  Moreover, as DM, you are the authority figure, so if you see something in-universe or out-of-character you’re not comfortable with or seems in bad faith, say something.  I know the rule of improv is “say yes” and DnD is, at its heart, an improv-based story, but you have the responsibility as the DM to ensure that everyone is having fun and sometimes that means saying “fuck no.”

Be a fan of your party.  I boosted this one from the Powered By The Apocalypse games, because I think it’s a great rule.  Basically, you, as the person running the game, should be a fan of the characters!  That means giving them lots of chances for badass moments, emotional connections, and interesting personal plots.  The more you as the DM spread around the narrative love and the exciting beats between your party members, the more your players will enjoy seeing each other in the spotlight.

Get in touch with your inner sadist.  Remember those backstories I encouraged players to create?  Make them tell you every detail.  And then make them bleed.  Your character has a long-lost brother?  Sounds like you just got a convenient villain!  Your character’s village was burned down and they’re the sole survivor?  Mmm, what tasty opportunities for necromancy.  Your character spent their whole life loyal to their king and lost everything defending the throne?  Guess who just became the Big Bad?  Every person your character includes in their backstory is a leverage point, every place they’ve ever cried is now a destination on the party map, every tragedy they’ve ever suffered is a gift that they’ve given to you personally.  The more angst they include in their backstory, the less work you have to do coming up with personal plot arcs.  They’ll hand you that shit, all you have to do is take merciless advantage.  Have fun.

Make NPCs, and then make your players love them.  A helpful tavern keeper!  A beautiful guardswoman!  A stablehand with a secret!  An ornately detailed world is all well and good, but good NPCs are what will make your players get into the game.  Are you low on ideas?  Spend an hour thinking about supporting characters you love, and then insert them wholesale if your players are unfamiliar with the source media.  If you can’t get away with that, rename them, give them a new face, and now you have an NPC.  Example: I just met Gilmore in Critical Role!  I love him!  Now my players have a flirty shopkeep friend named Renwick who’s a tiefling but is otherwise indistinguishable from Gilmore.  No one has caught on yet.  I’m looking forward to putting his life in danger again to make them Upset.  (Did I not mention?  The full text of this rule in my mind is “make NPCs, make your characters love them, and then brutally kill them off” but then I’m told I’m a very angsty DM, so YMMV.)

Make failure narratively interesting.  This one is pretty straightforward--if your players fail at a task that’s plot-relevant, the failure should be as interesting as success would have been.  It may mean your characters spend a lot of time breaking out of prisons, but it’ll also mean that your players will be less likely to fudge dice rolls in order to “win” DnD.

The dice are your friends.  Someday your characters will try to fight something they really shouldn’t fight.  They will try to enchant something you didn’t give stats to.  They will try to do some dumb shit.  When all else fails, just roll a fistful of dice, assign purposes to each at random as needed, and wing it.  You didn’t give that character a Dex stat and now your cleric is casting Sacred Flame?  Roll a d6, that’s their brand new Dex stat, add it to a d20 and confidently report the outcome.  Which brings me to my last point...

Confidence is better than actual knowledge.  Not even Matt Mercer is right all the time about DnD rules.  There is literally too much information and too many myriad ways to tweak it in order to know everything about even a single edition of DnD, let alone the many other RPGs in the world.  Keep a computer near at hand for quick rule checks when needed, admit when you’re wrong when applicable, but if you can’t find something quickly and don’t know the answer, make a command decision and then stick to it.  As long as you’re consistent, confident, and fair, I guarantee you your players will not complain.