#GM is scared D:

[thydungeongal]

i’m scared to ask but… what is gleeblor

Gleeblor comes from this post:

I originally used it as a coy way to talk about how some people (especially D&D players) with very limited exposure to RPGs as a medium take as universal certain assumptions in RPGs when those assumptions only hold true for a specific subset of RPGs. This post was, at the time, inspired by having been talking about how D&D's use of the term "encounters" was not neutral and even more so the idea of specifically planned encounters that are created with a game balance first perspective should not be taken as universal and many D&D players responded with incredulity (like, "if the GM doesn't plan encounters, how does anything even happen in the game?" which is so D&D brained it hurts).

Anyway since then I've just started to use "gleeblor" as shorthand for anything that might confuse a D&D only player.

[thepleasuregoblin]

Objective Ranking of types of XP systems in ttrpgs

XP is a discreet resource spent on character improvements of the player's choice. Examples: Numenera/Cypher System, Warhammer RPGs, World of Darkness, Shadowrun (even though it's called karma in that one)

XP is primarily used to measure progress to next level, the threshold for next level can be different depending on the character, and can be reduced by the player spending it or by certain events taking it from the player character. XP value is not decreased by gaining a level. Examples: AD&D, Pathfinder 1e

XP is used exclusively to measure progress to next level, is assigned based on relative challenge, and has consistent thresholds to next level between characters. XP value is reset to 0 after gaining a level. Examples: Pathfinder 2e, Dungeon Crawl Classics (and some other OSRs)

XP is used exclusively to measure progress to next level, is based on an arbitrary measurement of the challenges (monsters) that award it, and XP thresholds are consistent between characters. XP values do not decrease after gaining a level. All of the flaws of method #2 (huge numbers, easily confused math) in service of nothing, using method #3 would make more sense in every conceivable way, but you, the designer, are convinced that the trappings of older games will satisfy grognards and the big numbers won't scare new players (wrong on both counts), because your game has to appeal to everyone simultaneously. Also you offer a hand-wavy alternative that puts all the work on the GM so if people don't want to use your shitty XP system the group can just offload the work on the GM like everything else in your game. Examples: d&d 5e pretty much exclusively

[cavegirlpoems]

Do you have any strong opinions on mechanics simulating fear?

Addendum: why are fear mechanics always so controversial, I often see them being the topic of heated discussion.

I like them when they're done well, which they rarely are.

As to the controversy, it's the same controversy for most psychological mechanics, and I think it comes from two factors.

The first is that in a traditional gm/player set-up, there is a sharp line deliniating what a player can and can't have narrative control over: the player controls what goes on inside their PC's head (what they think, intend, etc) but everything outside that - often even the outcomes of their actions falls under the GM's purview. This is a wild imbalance in narrative power, and the player very very rarely gets to extend their narrative authority outside their PC's mind.

So, any mechanic which results in the GM telling the player how they feel intrudes into the PC's mind, which cuts into their already extremely narrow area of narrative authority. This produces a sence of 'I only have this much say, and now I don't even reliably have that', resulting in resentment towards these mechanics.

The second is that these mechanics are rarely implemented well. In trad spaces, there tend to be few mechanics for social/psychological/emotional things beyond what I call the "D&D coercion model" of social mechanics. That is to say "If you pass the check they do what you tell them, if you fail they don't". This means that this sort of mechanic is generally a very binary "If you roll well, the character does what they're told". Whilst fine, I guess for dealing with NPCs in games that aren't focussed on social interaction, when applied to PCs this model of interaction totally yanks control away from the player, resulting in an absolute loss of agency. "The NPC rolled well on Intimidate, so you are scared and do as you're told" is a shit experience for a player.

Now, there are games where a loss of agency is the point; think rotschrek in VtM, where losing control of your actions is the point of the horror. However, outside these specific circumstances, its a poor mechanic.

So how to fix fear mechanics? Well, the same way you fix any social/psychological mechanics. You stop them from being mechanics that say what you do, and make them incentive mechanics that reward you for going with them or penalise you for ignoring them, but critically still leave you the choice.

(for me, the aha moment for this was seeing how Monsterhearts handles strings etc. They never force you to act, but they can certainly incentivise it)

EG: an extremely crude but basically alright fear effect isn't "you flee" it's "if you flee, you regain willpower points" or even "if you don't flee, you must pay willpower points to stay".

An example from an unrealeased project of my own is below:

[cali-kabi]

if you're going to close the questions, want to tell you that I really like your art and how colorful it is, and how you try to give your version to each character. Whether your piece is kirby or not, it brings a smile to my face every time I see it. And maybe there aren't people who will tell you directly but, there are people who like your art too, don't give up!

gm/gn

Aw thank you much for your kind message!🥹💖yeah the b/ot situation has been annoying lately (I hope tumblr fixes it soon) I don’t want anyone to feel scared or hesitant to ask me something or a question. I understand the feeling, shy cuz I can feel like that too ;w;

Here have a simple doodle with Galacta Knight with some stars and clouds :D🌟💫

[badass-at-fandoming]

I got this idea from a post by nightingaletrash: in 1954 Glasgow hundreds of schoolchildren armed themselves with knives, axes, crucifixes and wooden stakes and stormed graveyards to hunt for a vampire, having heard rumors of a "seven foot tall vampire with iron teeth" who had killed two children.

If Beckett had visited Glasgow during this time to search for an artifact or talk with a contact, what would he think of this phenomenon, and what would happen if he found himself being pursued by hundreds of these angry kids? Would he be able to escape without breaking the masquerade?

Hi hi hi! I couldn't find the post you're referring to, so tagging @nightingaletrash to see if she remembers. Mental Floss did an article on the Gorbals vampire here.

A graveyard housing a quarter million corpses sounds like an excellent place to earthmeld. I wouldn't be surprised if Beckett chose to sleep the day away there. He'd definitely be surprised to wake up to a mob of murderous children! I think he'd be startled, but ultimately okay—by 1953 he'd have plenty of options to escape the raving teenage horde. Mist, Protean doggo, Celerity etc. If you want a narrative story about it, hit up @beckettluvr42 I've been enjoying their art!

The Gorbals Vampire might be a fun plot hook, don't you think? Maybe a Presence-user lured the children to the graveyard? As a power move, or a Pied Piper style threat? To scare Beckett specifically? IDK, I'm texting the Mental Floss article to our GM so he can horrify us with it. :D

Thank you for the ask! Historical musings are fun! And even more fun to insert Beckett into, hahaha :D

[ellimisms]

Concept: D&D homebrew oneshot based off Animorphs where you each play as one of the main characters of the Animorphs series.

The morphing system would be a modified Wild Shape mechanic, altered to two ends: first, to better fit the book's lore, and second, to make class factor into it more so each character is more unique. Probably each character would be able to use some of their class actions (just for an example, Action Surge for fighters or Rage for barbarians) while in morph, and morphing would restore hit points to 100%.

There would be a skill check associated with morphing--it'd be a Wisdom-based skill that you could gain proficiency in. Roll at advantage when using a familiar morph or becoming another human, disadvantage for things you're scared of or morphing while badly injured. Do a morphing check whenever you're in a new morph for the first time to see if you can get control of it; the actual number to beat is up to the GM based on what the animal is.

Also there would have to be some sort of mechanic to prevent TPKs--the main crew has a LOT of plot armor in the books because they can't die (until the end), so there'd need to be something to keep the PCs alive. Maybe if you "die" you don't actually perish, but instead something very bad happens to the party (you get infested, maybe?)

Infestation would be another new mechanic, though a pretty simple one; if a PC gets infested, the GM just starts controlling that character as the yeerk. The player can try to interrupt what the yeerk's doing, but has to roll a nat 20 with disadvantage (no bonuses from skill proficiencies)--it's supposed to be nearly impossible in the books so that's fairly lore-consistent.

In terms of the actual characters you can play:

Jake: Fighter, probably Battle Master subclass as that's more strategically focused. Not much else to say to be honest--I think he'd be proficient in persuasion, since he's supposed to be a good leader.

Marco: Rogue, maybe? Frankly his strengths don't match up with a specific class--maybe multiclass rogue/bard or fighter/bard because I know for a FACT he can and does cast vicious mockery.

Rachel: Barbarian for SURE, probably the Berserker subclass though I find the idea of her being a Wildheart pretty funny and thematically accurate.

Cassie: Probably a Druid or Beast Master ranger--I'm not sure where I stand on allowing caster classes since that doesn't exist in the real world but neither does morphing. Which one she is just depends on that.

Tobias: Who even KNOWS with this guy. Since he's stuck in morph it matters less, but I'd actually go with warlock--his patron is the Ellimist, since he's the one who seems to be able to argue with the Ellimist the most. It's either that or sorcerer, but he doesn't really gain any powers from his andalite bloodline so that seems less accurate.

Ax: Fighter, but it'd be different because he is an andalite. Just off the top of my head I'd make him be able to deal slashing damage on an unarmed attack (maybe just make his unarmed attack count as a sword attack) and increase his movement speed.

A group could also choose to discard these characters and play as a bunch of original characters if they so chose.

Anyways I'm probably the only person in the world that cares enough about both Animorphs and D&D to create this but oh well have fun.

[tadfools]

I’m thinking about how much Matthew Mercer means to me (not only as a voice actor but as a gm) I’m thinking about the joy I get when I play video game/watch a show and I hear his voice (Minsc, Faribanks, MacCready, Majima, Yamato, Leon Kennedy, that bitch from Thunder Cats and so many more) like that’s my friend! That’s someone who’s voice i’ve heard for roughly 4 hours every Thursday for the last 9 years!

I remember watching critical role with the cracking audio and fuzzy cameras on geek and sundry and being absolutely enamored with the D&D world he created. I remember watching CR grow and how excited the gang got when milestones that now seem so trivial were reached. More than anything else I remember how I felt the first time I watched Matt play D&D with his friends and how extraordinary of a storyteller he is. Not only has he inspired me to become a GM but also a writer and a game dev

Each Thursday at the end of a session when I wave back to him through a screen automatically like I was actually at the table and he smiles and asks ‘is it Thursday yet?’ I think back to when I was 16 and my persistent depression was starting to spearhead my life how I used that as an excuse not to kill myself. And I understand how that can seem really silly to someone who’s never had to cope with depression, but being able to find something to use as an anchor point to say ‘no I can’t kill myself because I gotta feed my cat, I gotta water the plants, I gotta watch critical role next week’ is a phenomenal steppingstone on the path to normality

Matt was and is such a great help with that because he’s also coping with depression and anxiety and every time I get scared or really sad I think about all the wonderful things he’s done in spite of the chemical imbalances that we both share and that if he can thrive so can I. I truly believe he is one of the kindest people in the world, he cares so much for his friends and his family and all of these strangers he’ll never meet

I guess where I’m going with this is to say that if by any chance Matt does see this (because I know he’s a Tumblr lurker) Thank you. Thank you for being my friend and someone I look up to quite a lot. Thank you for sharing the world you’ve created with all of us and thank you for still being here

[minthynights]

So I’m in a D&D campaign that my SO is GM for and we’ve had three sessions so far. I made one of my Tavs to play and got a proper backstory for her. I just started writing and the ideas just kept coming to me. She’s a Seldarine drow paladin and my idea is that this is taking place before she is tadpoled.

Buuuut… she may not survive the next session…

And I’m honestly quite anxious. I don’t know when the others have time but I hope soon because I’m worrying to death.

We’re running a CoS and we’ve just disturbed Largoth the Decayer but we haven’t long rested. We nearly died in the room before this. I still have my smites because I spent the last fight paralysed and rolling fails to hit. But our fucking healer is out of juice. I only have 4 lay on hands points. And we haven’t levelled to level 3 yet. Sooooo… yeah… we’re probably gonna die. Especially if the dice decide to be fuckwads and I won’t get any hits. Like. Just let me hit and do maximum damage and we might make it. But probably not. Idk man. I think we need a miracle to survive. Luckily, my SO’s style of GMing is that he is not actively doing everything in his power to kill us, and he is also a big fan of thinking outside of the box and roleplaying, using stuff outside of the given actions. Like I could technically ask my goddess for help, and perhaps that would work. I have been thinking about swearing an oath in this manner, since I get to choose oath for level 3.

But idk man. I don’t know if we can survive this. And I’m scared 🥹

[open-hearth-rpg]

The Worst Thing: Great RPG Mechanics #RPGMechanics Week One

“Imagine the worst thing possible, assume it's true, and go from there.”

— Theodora Crain, The Haunting of Hill House, Season 1: Open Casket

Strong collaboration in play has changed my gaming in the last two decades. I come from the tradest of traddy backgrounds, learning D&D at a wee babe in the late 1970s. I grew up in a gaming community split between roleplayers, miniatures grognards, and classical wargamers. Given how young I was, I almost always played with GMs older than me, in a position of narrative and rule authority. You might get to define your character’s backstory a little, but you had little wiggle room before they’d say, “that’s not how X is.” That became my model and I kept hold of that for years.

The cracks came when, while complaining about prep and the need to revise the campaign gazetteer, my wife pointed out I didn’t need to do that work. She asked me how much of that material meaningfully impacted the table vs. how much I made up on the fly. That was the first break in the dam. The second was Dogs in the Vineyard. That swept everything away with the idea that you could just not prep at all beyond a basic framing concept.

And once you’ve allowed yourself to improv– and trust your own instincts– you can begin to trust others. You can start to respect and even seek out their input. For me it starts with a basic writer’s characterization technique: having the players describe where their characters live. Then once they’ve painted that kind of scene, giving them the space to develop other meaningful features of characters and play.

Like the horrors which await them.

There’s a great admonition in horror that the thing you imagine behind the door is much scarier than what lies behind the door. We have to embrace that moment between the introduction of the horrific and the revelation of the truth. That’s where you get dread, the real horror feeling you can create via games, books, and movies.

Bluebeard’s Bride does this with a simple collaborative concept. The Shiver from Fear move sets this: name the thing you are most afraid will happen, the groundskeeper will tell you how it’s worse than you feared. It engages you, and everyone else, with this imaginative process. You get to set some of the stakes for the moment. And you begin a light, meta-competition with others. How bad can I make it? What can I handle? What would really spook me out?

Jesse Ross’ Trophy Dark takes and builds on this concept, making the whole table complicit in the building of the horror. Rather than a single move, the whole thing game stands atop this: When you attempt a risky task, say what you hope will happen, and ask the GM and the other players what could possibly go wrong. Then gather dice.

There’s a phase of the whole table digging into this question: what’s the worst thing which could happen? Now when you roll, you have a panoply of possible fates to dread. You know what fates could be in store for you. Now we have that dread. You will get to pick your fate, but that’s even worse, because of course you want to make it interesting– and you know what scares you.

[lost-where-the-forest-would-grow]

Does this count as music for the exchange? https://youtu.be/VHrUfj6s2R0

okay now I'm no longer either drunk or hungover I can finally get to this.

I think you might however be forgetting I do a lot of contemporary music and microtones and additive time signatures don't scare me. I can also tell this is a really dodgy musescore rendering as all the percussion has odd amounts of reverb and I'm 90% sure that bass flute is just the regular flute soundfont. I couldn't tell you if it was musescore 3 or 4 though. I can also look at the score and spot about 100 errors because it hasn't been nicely typed but if I was to go into every one of them this post would be about 2000 words long. Dynamics and articulation are a bit shoddy though, particularly for woodwind, and the sheer number of percussion staves is quite ambitious.

That being said 11/8 is a lot of fun and there are a lot of fun ways you can do it. This is the standard cut the last beat out of the bar technique that leaves you with 3+3+3+2/8 (or more of a 6/8 + 6/8 depending). The microtones don't particularly stand out to me but they are a nice coloristic effect. The fact the microtones are used only on certain notes makes me think it's more tuning system thing. That being said the notes that are detuned are interesting as they appear to the the 3rds of chords but not exactly the direction I would expect them for a tuning system such as just intonation.

Now I haven't' checked the entire score but here is an example:

What is notable here is that this is a Am7/E that moves to a Dadd11. The piece isn't in G major, but the effect remains the same. Normally however minor thirds are tuned about 16 cents flat, so if you want to make it line up perfectly with the harmonic series you would want it to be slightly sharp. Here's it's a quartertone flat which is a very neat effect. The same thing happens with a number if F quarter sharps. It still mostly sounds like an alternate tuning system or something similar but in such a way that isn't causing a huge layer of dissonance.

Now I know the music exchange is only meant to be one but this did get my classical musician senses tingling so you can get multiple with a brief analysis of the piece after. I've tried to find stuff that do interesting this with dissonance, microtones and rhythm specifically.

First one here is Béla Bartók - Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm No.6 Been recently learning this one on the piano and it's a fair bit of fun. As the title suggests, it's a Bulgarian rhythm that is directly notated as 3+3+2/8.

This part here in the score is particularly fascinating I think (about 0:28 seconds into the video). If you actually study what's happening it's a fairly basic call and response in the two parts, both moving down in 5ths each time. However the first phrase in the right hand sounds as Gm while the left hand plays the counterphrase at the tritone in C#m. And this is repeated downwards a 5th each time. There is also the fact the rhythm doesn't quite like line up as you would expect as both are playing 3+3+2 but offset from each other (hence the stems going over the bar). it finishes by repeating in unison two octaves apart, which is a classic of the early 20th century. This is genuinely one of the most difficult passages in the entire piece just because of how fiddly it is to get those rhythms to stand out at the tritone while playing at speed.

Phrases like this are also interesting because it's fascinating harmony. It's Bb/d - G - Eb/Bb - C/G (in the following bar on the next system). This particularly fascinating to me because the Bb - G are effectively done as chromatic transposition, as is the Eb - C are. But the relationship between the G- Eb is what's known as a chord rotation. I can't easily explain it in a tumblr post but it's a fascinating post-tonal technique used on fair standard chords, and it's used a number of times throughout the piece. Basically the relationship between the chords and the phrasing isn't entirely random.

Bartok was also living in the early 20th century and so his enharmonic notation isn't quite there sometimes. Here is the worst spelt C major and F major chords I've seen in a while (treble and bass clef respectively.

I think you would get killed for trying to write enharmonics like that these days but it was like 1930 and they hadn't figured out how to write harmony like this yet.

SECOND PIECE: Joshua Mallard — State Machine 90% sure I've put this in one of my music ramble posts but it is pretty neat. The youtube channel that uploaded it is a great place to find huge amounts of contemporary music but the three movements are genuinely a really neat example of a lot of contemporary styles. You'll notice the first movement sounds fairly dissonant and jaggard, despite the fact it's time signatures aren't particularly complex and there are no microtones (not including the gliss at the end). The second movement is full of weird ways of playing with microtones and has a really neat way of notating it. The third movement is anyone's guess but I'm sure you can figure it out enough if you want the score. As odd as the score looks it's genuinely a lot easier to parse on a first glance than the Bartok's is, so a full rant isn't really necessary.

Third piece is my own because I'm a freak. I did amazingly forget to get the one recording I have of it (not the best recording but still far better than musescore). This means you're stuck with the extra crunchy musescore rendering that barely gets half the notation in. I've got the rendering below and you can find the score here. The notation still needs some tidying but it's not entirely terrible.

The piece is about the great abyssal plain at the bottom of the ocean. It's the name for the great black expanse of mud and rocks 1000's of meters deep. Part of a suite I'm writing on sinking deeper into the ocean for piano quintet.

You might also notice some funny things in the score:

Musescore hates this. That's a cluster chord on both black and white notes on the piano. You literally get your arm and place it ontop of a bunch of notes. The strange notes in the cello are artificial harmonics, which I don't have time to explain but musescore hates it. Like the piece you sent in there are a few places where I've adjusted the time signature to something additive to throw it a bit, although the bigger rhythmic interest is the fact that the 3/4 sections are effectively a lot of polymeter. I had almost the entire piece in 6/4 because it's the lowest common denominator but I had to try conduct it at the tempo it's in the it just fell apart with how long each bar was. Some of the parts are effectively playing 4/2 (or 2/2 I guess?), some 12/8 (6/8?) and some 3/3 so just had to find something I can squeeze everything into to make it work.

There is also the fun part with the sost pedal that musescore cannot do. When you hold a bunch of notes down with the sost pedal they remain as part of the piano's resonance as they don't have dampers on them. What I've done is tell the player to do a cluster chord on all the low white notes and then leave it in the pedal while playing a C# in the middle of it. The C# clashes really nicely against the low diatonic notes that resonate behind it without the full and kind of washy sound of the full pedal. This only really works on grand pianos or any piano with a sost pedal, but if you have a real piano you can try this technique by just holding down the white notes with your arm and playing a black note in the middle of it all.

Anyways huge post over. You hit my music autism mode in exactly the right specific way so you get this. Feel free to send in more stuff.

[cxlrose]

gm :D pls wish me luck for my test today huhuhu i’m so scared bro

[cyanlastride]

can i tell you a story? for my own good, not yours. you have no obligation to listen.

im warning you now, its an unpleasant one.

the summer before grade 10, i made the best choice of my life. i was feeling a bit lonely, and inspired by my dad to try playing D&D. finding myself lacking real-life friends -- it was the summer, you see, the most barren and socially isolating time of the year, beating even christmas break -- i took to Roll20, an online forum where people meet and start TTRPG groups, dnd5e being chief among them. now, i grew up very closely to the internet. club penguin, nexuiz/xonotic, planeshift, i grew up socializing with people online quite often. but internet forums, even as dull as reddit, werent really my thing. hell, i only got this tumblr account recently. so, making the spur of the moment decision to make a roll20 account and reply to an LFG for new players was really quite a leap for me. a complete shot in the dark.

but it paid off. we had a bit of a rocky start after our first GM ran off never to be seen again, but one of the players stepped up to be our new GM and we played almost every week for almost a year and a half. i forged a strong bond with both the players and the characters -- at the time, i didnt really distinguish between the two. we had some close calls, a lot of near misses, and my character even died once. our party had two paladins, and i was one of them, so resurrection wasnt too big of a deal. eventually, though, we bite off more than we could chew, and land in some pretty hot water. specifically, an underground church full of rats. how we ended up there and the mighty battle that took place are wonderful and thrilling stories for another day. we had to stop the session mid-battle, i dont remember why, but we picked it up the week after. when we came back, we were prepared to fight to the last. if either myself or the other paladin survived, we could resurrect the party with the diamonds on the iron band i had forged around my wrist. if any of the other party members survived, they could bring the bodies up to the surface and get help. we just had to win the fight.

now, being a new player playing pretty much a pre-gen'd paladin, i went the standard plate armour plus sword and board. this made my AC suuuper high, enough that enemies could only really hit me on a roll of 18+. also, if they rolled a nat 20 against me, i had a magic shield that would absorb some of the blow and actually heal myself and my allies for a couple turns. so the only way they can actually hurt me reliably is if they rolled 18 or 19. i was facing off against some random rogue that i didnt know and didnt care to know. if i landed one solid hit on this lady, i could smite her into oblivion. she was a goon, basically.

a goon that rolled three 19s in a row.

a goon that killed me, and any chance i had of saving my friends.

rolling an 18 or a 19 on a 20 sided die is 1/10. rolling three in a row is (1/10)^3, or 1/1000. one in a thousand. that sounds small, right?

fate and chance make mockeries of our lives more often than anyone cares to admit.

we kept playing after that, made new characters, but the loss was real. that probably sounds stupid, especially to people that have had real people close to them die, but to me, my closest friends of the past year were gone because of a stupid chance.

ive taken small risks more seriously since then. i dont drive, and i stare drivers in the eye when i cross the street. im not scared of dying, but i want to see it coming.

when covid started, i spent a lot of time staring death in the face.

not my own death. i was/am unlikely to die from covid. i barely even go outside enough to be at risk of catching a cold. im young, and im healthy.

my parents are older, and less healthy. my mom is a highschool teacher.

ive spent the last 4 years thinking every so often about what i would do if they died. ive treated it as a real possibility that something could happen to them. ive been mentally preparing myself. even now that we're mostly out of the covid danger zone, that preparation remains.

i never considered what might happen if only one of them fell ill. when my dad messaged me that my mom was going into emergency surgery, i could handle that. when my mom was moved into the ICU, i was glad. she is getting the care she needs from experts and professionals, and shes doing okay.

when we get the call that my dad's father, who lives in a resthome in another city, hasnt been seen in two days and that the ambulance just drove away without loading anyone in the back, i can handle that. to be honest i really didnt know my pappa that well.

when my dad, my stoic old dad, breaks into tears after starting the sentence "they can't both die..."

thats harder.

one in a thousand.

its not as small as you think it is.

thank you for listening. my mom, my dad, myself, we're going to be okay.

[us3rn4m3n0tf0und1170]

gm everybody :D

last night I learned that even my subconscious likes marvel

Somebody tell me what this means I’m honestly scared

(I had a dream I went to a comic con/just a convention and met a bunch of actors, cosplayers, and bought a bunch of merch all of which being marvel stuff. And the scary thing is that I never remember my dreams, but I remembered this one 😦)

Also working on a comic for my marvel au <3 be expecting that soon :D

[vulpes-nothus]

I remember hearing similar things about 10-20 years ago about horror being impossible to pull off in ttrpgs, including phrases like "it's just not possible to scare players" and "the best you can hope for is just the themes."

The thing is horror games existed. For a while. A long while. As in I'm confident that at the very least Call of Cthulu is at least as old as the AD&D Monster Manual. And have only gotten better since then. And I have several success stories of real (intended) fear responses from horror games I ran, as an amateur GM.

So it pains me that people are poopooing a game studio that is actually doing something cool with investigation, which again, like horror, has been a focus of various ttrpgs for decades now.

Don't shit on people improving old technologies.

People going "Actual investigative urban fantasy roleplaying has not been attempted yet" in the notes of @anim-ttrpgs is, too, a form of gleeblor.

Like, as a generalization, people saying that "X type of gameplay rarely works in tabletop roleplaying games, here's some advice on how to do Y" are usually woefully unaware of the breadth of the medium and what has already been done, and also often have kind of a myopic view of what can be achieved via game design.

[foxxoria]

me and my friends have been wanting to play D&D for a while, our experience ranges from "has played a total of two sessions", to "has never played before".

i volunteered to GM the campaign, after all i have the most worldbuilding/storytelling experience; it being my "special interest" and all i really didn't mind!

atleast that was untill i realised how dumb(/aff) my players are- we are one session in, and they have adopted a wild bear cub, said cub got in a magic accident due to two of the PCs basically trying to kill eachother, and is now the size of a horse. an actual, shire sized, bear cub. I'm almost scared to see what happens when i introduce them to mimics x'D

the party is definetly quite the "rag tag" team of outlaws (but they were framed!... well except for the tiefling, he probarbly belongs in jail,, just not for kidnapping-) we have an armless, faceless warforge with the soul of a dwarf and a mossbeard. a runaway tiefling with both mommy and daddy issues. and a literal slime. all soon to be accompanied by a human who is dead set on the fact that magic does not exsist.

don't worry though, they're protected by a bear and an idiot goblin-chimera girl! xD

but its okay, because they're cute lmao!

[tryingdoesnthurt]

1 - 30/06/2025

wieiad - 1.98

breakfast (7:15am): white yogurt, choco rice krispies, one banana and one slice of chocolate cake; one cup of soluble coffee and barley plus one coffee

mid-morning (9:20am): one small barley at the bar

lunch (1:30pm): rice with canned tuna and one tomato

afternoon drinks (3:30pm / 5:15pm): one coffee / one can of coke zero

dinner and dessert (8:30pm / 10:15pm): rice with vegetable burger (1 teaspoon of oil), two tomatoes and some melon / one cream and chocolate ice cream cone

[B/P - L - D - E - SH]

[cigarettes: 17] [vape: 160 drags]

[TIPs: 0] [TAB: no] [steps: 11.1k]

random pics I was able to take

daily log

today started with me crying because today its two months since my grandpa passed away. I wrote him a letter and avoided going to the cemetery in the morning because i feared a big emotional crisis

i've been scared to relapse in b/p since it's been a bit more than a week since i last either b or p and i'm very happy about it and i'm terrified the smallest thing will get me off the edge again idk idk

this morning i stayed at the bar for three hours and a half. it was cool. there was a nice breeze. my grandma joined me for a coffee mid morning. that was also nice

today i went back to group therapy and met a new girl that started last wednesday. she's cool ! but also one girl from the group is going to the next phase of the therapy journey :( she was very nice too , but she has some groups at around our times so we will say hi from time to time ! C:

now i'm on the train home and i am sweaty asf cus i walked to the station (mistake :( ) and will go to the cemetery once I'm home. i wanna change the flowers in the vases cus we all have been away for 1week and more. he deserves nice flowers

my girlfriend suggested i make some kind of little book with all the letters i'm writing to my grandpa. like a poetry collection, but she considers them poetry and i consider them letters lol. the point still stands. i will think about it

also, idk if i ever mentioned this in the past week's logs, but i wanted to take part in a art "showroom" that was gonna be in july around the streets of my town. a few days before the deadline to candidate i had a big crisis and thought i didn't deserve anything nice in the world so i let the deadline pass (it was five days ago) and so i will not exhibit anything at all. i'm not even sad about it. i still think i don't deserve a space to show my art (in the city specifically, i have a painting account on insta tho) anyway idk idk

broke down at the cemetery (as i thought i would have), cried a lot, went back home and had dinner. added a dessert cus i skipped the afternoon snack cus my protein bar melted for the weather :( but i appreciated the ice cream cone !

i blabbed too much in this log lmao, anyway....

gn! or gm! or good middle-of-the-day !! love y'all :3