#DM to order yours !!

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF sticker club stickers for December!!

[savaralyn2]

[smallmightsupremacy]

Might i be bold and ask you for your fave bkdk fics?

Anon. Anon. I'm so sorry that I've taken forever to reply to this ask, but I hope you understand that this is one of the hardest tasks I've ever had to do I think for starters I'd recommend the 'big 3' bkdk fics. They're all popular for a reason, and if you're looking for something long and angsty, you can count on those to deliver. (Though, I will be honest here and tell you that I never finished twyutd, but from what I hear it's a super good fic!!)

As for specific recommendations, I'll try to condense my list of favorite fics wayyy down and then go on to name some authors that I love so this post doesn't go on forever So, after scrolling in a hot sweat through my bookmarks, here's the final list:

promises kept by gabstar The Night We Met by majjale

glowing skins and pleading fingers by mimisyum

All We Ever Knew by dynamics

warm hands by flowercafe

all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing by maxisnotokay

Do Not Disturb by surveycorpsjean

headliner by passengerside

As for bkdk authors, here are a few of them whose works I adore and go back to read day after day: ladyofsnails

sapphicflower

Etherealbeing

panpanicatmha

red_sneakers

comradekiwi

Happy reading anon <3

[8pxl]

and this ✨ both of my new stickers are on my shop ☺️

[curapicas]

This. Man.

That he was jealous of the cool chimera was understandable. But he really went on an entire quest to save his sister who was devoured by a monster and then thought "you know what. god I wish that was me"

Bonus: Kabru, who has seen people being eaten by monsters, looking like a new nightmare was just added to his collection

[krscblw]

ko-fi shop update!

hey so if you were interested in getting a lino print of one of these designs

i've opened a ko-fi shop! and you can get one for $5 or three for $12!

any support would be appreciated!

[the-lavender-clown]

@beannary JUST BOUGHT ONE OF MY KEYCHAINS HUH?!!!??? OHMIGOSH!!!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

if the animorphs fought with medieval-type weapons in their human forms, what would be everyone's weapon of choice?

I do not know a thing about Medieval weaponry. Any history buffs wanna weigh in on this one?

[blueskittlesart]

Feel free to ignore this but as someone who also goes to art school, I find it really interesting how other art schools also have a “don’t date your peers” sort of faux pa. Like so many people I know (including me) refuse to date anyone else who goes to my college 😭

I wonder why that is tbh, small school thing maybe?

being so serious i didn't have anything against dating other art school peers when i first came here and i think most freshmen dont but once you have one or two art school relationships under your belt you realize why all the upperclassmen avoid dating each other like the plague

[centaurianthropology]

Why Spenser Starke is a Fantastic Horror GM (and the Core Fantasy in Candela Obscura)

So, I have seen some rancid takes about Spenser Starke online. Less so on this webbed site, largely because people around here are not in a pissing contest to prove who’s the most cynical, superior, and dickish. But there have still been some mind-blowing ones, from “he says UM too much” (guess who else does that? Brennan, but I don’t see these people criticizing him), or “he describes scenes like shots in a movie and that’s BAD WRONG” (while you might not stylistically enjoy it, I for one adore seeing a new interpretation of how to narrate while GMing, and think he’s doing great).

But the two that rub me the wrong way most are that he “controls the narrative too tightly” and doesn’t allow the characters to meander too long before throwing them back into the narrative, and that he’s “too harsh” in that even mixed successes tend to net characters damage of some sort. I saw accusations of “GM vs Player” mentality, but everyone was clearly enjoying themselves and the experience.

And that, I think, highlights the fundamental disconnect between these complainers and what’s actually happening on the screen: they don’t understand the core experience.

They have likely never played horror TTRPGs. They may have never played TTRPGs period, and instead are armchair DMs based purely on how Matt and Brennan DM, not really understanding that there are a thousand other ways to DM. But if they have played TTRPGs, I would guess that they’ve exclusively played D&D or its ilk. And I say that because there’s a very clear belief here that empowerment and ‘winning the game’, as well as wandering about freely to create your own narrative at your own pace are all fundamental parts of the TTRPG experience as a whole. But they aren’t. They’re fundamental to D&D, yes, but this is not what players come to a game like Candela Obscura for.

Each TTRPG has a central fantasy playing out. In D&D it’s heroic empowerment. D&D is mechanically built around getting more and more power and eventually defeating the big bad. A good GM in D&D, like Matt Mercer, focuses on giving out challenges, but always helping their players strive to overcome and grow and become better. This self-actualization is at the heart of the experience.

Horror games are not about that at all. The closest to that fantasy is something like ‘Vampire the Masqerade’ or other World of Darkness games, which do feature power growth, but the core fantasy is actually about learning that you are a monster. And embracing power will lead to even greater monstrousness. The horror in games like this is both political and personal, and the system is mechanically built to accommodate that horror.

And if you watch LA by Night or NY by Night, you’ll actually see that Jason Carl employs a fairly similar narrative tightness to his storytelling as that of Spenser Starke. Because a huge part of horror is about establishing and maintaining a mood. To do that, a DM has to keep a tighter rein on pacing, cutting from scene to scene and moment to moment in a way that is more directed than in D&D, because that helps establish and maintain the vibe being created.

Candela Obscura plays, thematically, a lot like one of my favorite games to run: ‘Call of Cthulhu’. CoC is a game all about disempowerment. The power differential between the players and the monsters is vast. Combat is vicious, short, and deadly, and direct combat almost always ends badly for an investigator. There is an entire chapter devoted to running away for a reason.

Both CoC and Candela are built on danger, vulnerability, and a constant sense of tension. And Spenser is fantastic at all of these. He keeps his narrative laser focused, moving between moments rapid-fire to keep up that tension, and to introduce new dangers. He is a ‘vicious’ DM only in so much as even mixed successes hurt. But this also keeps the tension up by keeping the characters and players on the edges of their seats. They are almost never safe. They are almost never well. They are constantly juggling dwindling resources. They are underpowered, vulnerable, and afraid.

And that’s the core fantasy here: exploring fear in a safe way. Being stressed out in a way you can leave behind as soon as the scene is done. Constantly living on the edge, fighting the odds, and knowing that you likely won’t succeed or will only do so at great cost. And he is masterfully keeping that intensity running through each session.

He gives characters time to talk about themselves, time for scenes to play out, until he feels the tension begin to flag, and then he pushes on. He never lets the air go entirely out of the narrative sails. He has a great sense of when a character needs a moment (his use of the red PTSD lighting exemplifies how closely he’s paying attention to his players and adjusting the setting to fit their moods). He sometimes pushes on, gets pushback from a player who wants another beat, and is always happy to give that to them. He keeps the pace up, but is always very careful to make sure his players have what they need to still enjoy this particular experience.

All this is to say that Spenser is absolutely killing it at being an exemplary horror GM. His sense of pacing and tension, his ability to direct action while still always embracing player autonomy, and using the mechanics of the system to never allow them to feel entirely safe are all great tools in a horror GM’s toolkit.

Horror games are not for everyone. Certainly there are plenty of people who only ever want the hero fantasy of D&D, but I think it’s important to recognize what the goal of a game is, and what constitutes success within those parameters, rather than parameters that only exist in an audience member’s mind, because they don’t really get how horror games work.

[yoohyeon]

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♡ Italics = Content creators (various) ♡ If we are moots and you don’t have a tag yet please choose an emoji that is not one the list (no-tag moots are tag with 💜) ♡ the tag : Name / Nickname + Emoji ! ♡

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[utilitycaster]

will say whenever people are openly resentful of the time one cast member takes or the cool things their character gets, which, with the current cast, has in my opinion never been a problem when averaged out over the course of a campaign and taking into consideration the nature of the character, I just think of the scene in Tiny Heist where Justin McElroy in a dubious French accent is saying "I listen to them fight about he's got a bigger chicken nugget, no, I've got a bigger chicken nugget, no, it is my turn to play with the Ashinbot...I hate the children."

[to-shards-you-say]

call me the lord ruler the way im mourning these bands

[reallynotwelcomed]

The TRANSLATED Paranormal Order HQ is now available for purchase on Amazon!!

You can also buy it from the official Jambô Editora site! So if you can spend 6 dollars (I think??) and are curious about the Ordem universe, this is the best introduction to my grand special interest and Cellbit's life project!

https://www.amazon.com.br/gp/aw/d/6588634552/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1692241325&sr=8-1

[elftwink]

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

[spidergirl-fibula]

It's so hard to find irl queer spaces that are friendly to indie rpg players