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faeiri-tft · 1 year ago

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PLEASE do the toontown online rant i want it so badly

this post kinda got away from me, and by "got away from me" i mean this 3000 word toontown rant is Part One. there will be a Part Two to this later in which i actually talk about the fanservers i wanted to talk about. anyway let's go

toontown online (tto) was a children's mostly-turn-based subscription MMO released in 2003. after a few years of obviously being on life support, disney gave a one-month notice that tto (and several other games) would be closing on september 19th, 2013. on the same day the game closed, the fan-run server toontown rewritten (ttr) was announced (with multiple other fanservers/fangames/reimaginings being established since), and is a few months away from outliving the original game

see, one thing about tto that allowed fanservers to crop up so quickly and easily was that it had, um, interesting choices. very interesting choices. like, "kids could use a code injector to turn their backyards into giant mashed-together nightmarescapes"-level choices

youtube

(loose video description: a rabbit toon running around a chaotic mismash of rooms, obstacles, and npcs that Should Not Be There. audio caption: Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life".)

but ok let's talk about the actual game first.

toontown online (tto)

the game starts with you creating your player character - you can pick from eventually-9 species, a couple body types, and 2 dozen preset colors. the gender code is a spaghetti nightmare but you won't learn this until the fanservers come about so don't worry about it. you're then taken to the Toontorial, which explains maybe 20% of the game's mechanics before setting you loose into the main game

the toontorial also gives you the basic "plot", such as it is: Toontown is suddenly* under attack by a bunch of boring businessrobots called the Cogs. their goal is to turn toontown into a dreary gray featureless corporate hell; their business activities are so boring that they're physically painful to be around. luckily, they can't take a joke, so the toons have figured out how to defeat them: by playing pranks on them until they laugh so hard they Explode

*originally, the game installer had a little animation giving a backstory for the Cogs' creation. this was never referenced in game, removed pretty quickly, and i think even the devs kinda forgot it existed

that's...pretty much the whole story! in that context, your toon progresses through all of toontown, helping some mostly-pretty-interchangeable shopkeepers, reclaiming buildings from the cogs, eating ice cream, etc. occasionally, the cogs would Come Up With New Tricks (read: major content update) and the toons would Find A Way To Fight Back (read: same major content update). that was the closest thing to Plot, unless you count "the devs scheduled a bunch of invasions of high-tier cogs right before the game's closure". but...i doubt most the kids really expected a Plot. mickey mouse was there

the gameplay:

the Free Account

there were two...pretty different approaches to playing toontown online. when the game launched, there was a 3-day free trial to the entire game, after which you got kicked entirely until you subscribed. at some point, this was changed so that the first area, Toontown Central (TTC), was Always Free - you could do all of that area's quests/"taskline" and limited activities, indefinitely, and in theory this would make you beg your parents for the rest of the game

i have no idea if this actually got more subscriptions or not. from what i can tell it just spawned more warrior cats

(source)

there were. a Lot of warrior cats. there were some other social activities, too, such as Fashion Shows (with your limited range of clothes) and Begging Subscribed Players To Summon Cog Buildings To TTC and Getting Chat Banned. ...however, as one of the subscription kids i didn't really interact with this side of the game, so i'm not the best person to talk about it

2. the Paid Account

mmm look at those crisp clear graphics. hell yes

a subscription account gave you access to this whole map, along with all these areas' tasklines. to progress through the game, you must complete a variety of "ToonTasks" for the Toon Resistance (it's called that. their catchphrase is "Toons of the World, Unite!". you were giving disney money for this). these reward you by increasing your max health (your "Laff Points"), slowly unlocking more combat options, and sending you to different, higher-difficulty areas of toontown

some of these tasks were...longer than others. generally, though, they all boiled down to: "just go fight some cogs"

combat:

(source)

toontown battles are turn-based: the players use their attacks ("gags") first, and then any surviving cogs attack you with, usually, office equipment and puns thereof (unless the cog is e.g. a Loan Shark, in which case they can just fucking bite you). if you defeat a cog, it explodes; if the cog defeats you, you "go sad" and are sent back to the safety of the playground, lose your gag inventory, and can't leave until you heal.

early on, most your battles are 1v1, but later on almost everything is a multiplayer 4-ish-v-4.

an...interesting feature here in the game's early days was that you could only Type Your Own Words to someone who shared their "friend code" with you IRL. otherwise, you had to use this thing:

(source)

you had a set list of phrases you could string together, which generally covered most the things you wanted to say. but it could get frustrating when you wanted to have a real conversation with your toontown friends! so...as the source above mentions, people obviously found ways around the system. turns out that if you let players move objects around their houses, they will use that to Draw Letters and pass their friend code along regardless

eventually - before the warrior cats, of course - disney presumably realized this system was pretty goofy (🥁) , so the game got a real chat, albeit one that functioned on a very strict whitelist. my favorite is that it didn't let you type numbers, however you could just say won too tree for hive etc. like. disney i really don't know what to tell you. anyway

(isn't he charming)

cogs come in levels 1-12, with levels displayed above their heads, and as you'd expect their damage output and HP increase with their level. however, the game doesn't...actually show you cog HP? instead they have a little colored light on their chest that fades from green to red until they explode. you see numbers on all the damage you do, and you see your own HP/laff, but never the cogs'. also lategame cogs are Too Tall For You To See Their Level once they line up for battle (which isn't actually that bad but it's funny). there's a formula for HP per level, but it's never mentioned in-game. i guess someone can teach it to you but then you have to watch them type "a level tin cog has won tree too health" and is that really worth it

(as you can tell i just…don't get this. "my kid is practicing arithmetic with toontown!" - marketing angle expressly denied by god. the stealth edutainment was right there)

anyway! in theory, you have seven base combat options ("gag tracks"), which combine in a variety of ways:

toon-up, which restores your teammates' health;

trap, which does guaranteed high damage but only if someone uses lure;

lure, which stuns the cogs for a few turns and is the only way to make trap work

sound, which does low damage to every cog;

throw, which does medium-high-ish damage to one cog; multiple throws combined give percentage combo damage, and hitting a lured cog will also add percentage "knockback damage";

squirt, which is exactly like throw but less damage;

and drop, which does high damage but cannot hit lured cogs, and has low accuracy unless you hit the cog with something else first

each gag track has 6 levels, which you unlock by using that gag track a bunch. you can't carry as many of the high levels with you - i mean, putting one piano in your backpack makes perfect sense, but two is just silly, right

a few years into the game's lifespan, level 7s were added - these were huge AOE that you could regain with every 500 track EXP. there was also something called "organic gags" to promote the please-log-in-every-day gardening system

every player starts with throw and squirt, and throughout the game you slowly unlock four more gag tracks. your choices are permanent: once you have your six tracks, you're locked out of the seventh forever.

in theory, all of this opens up a huge variety of combat options!

in practice, the battle strategy looks something like this:

use sound

as mentioned, almost all of lategame will be 4v4 battles, which means sound will almost always outdamage everything on earth. you don't even need four foghorns (the highest normal sound gag) to break 200 AOE damage, and the highest health a cog EVER has is 200*. and two of the boss battles can reward you with gag restocks and heals that you can use mid-battle with no consequences (other than having to grind for those rewards a bunch). and failing THAT, you can just...ration your foghorns and take 2 turns to clear a set of cogs, interspersed with healing.

(*okay there was something called "v2.0 cogs" but they were...strange, and we just used sound anyway)

sure, once level 7s were added you could use those occasionally. and you could fall back on lure+throw if you didn't want to use your sound restocks. but even then, for most of tto's existence there was something called the "knockback bug" which. well. just look at it

(link for transcript. it's tvtropes sorry)

if you are a target-audience eight-year-old this translates to "lure + throw will only do enough damage if the cogs Feel like it." like it's really just insult to injury at this point. this was the result of One misplaced variable and was not fixed until the game closed

in the tto era, if you didn't have sound, you were kinda doomed to be kicked out of every fight forever

(bonus fun fact: there were Four entire battle themes and they were 40-second midi loops. let me out)

the bosses:

each of the four cog departments has a Boss Cog. to face off against them, you have to assemble a cog disguise and collect enough merits/stock options/whatever to be allowed into the boss's office.

(pictured: your convincing disguise)

when you enter, your disguise pops off due to Reasons, and you have to fight through...a bunch of waves of normal cogs. it's basically a really long normal battle. once the minions are dealt with, you have to, inexplicably, do a live-action battle against the boss themself:

youtube

(loose video description: four toons defeating the CFO by using magnet cranes to hit him in the face with safes for 32 seconds.)

the live-action rounds aren't supposed to go this quickly, but it's still...kinda strange? certain reoccurring game areas require Parkour, but there are no battles like this outside of the Four bosses. the CFO's room is the only place you see these cranes and they have A Lot Going On. the other 3 bosses have their own unique weird mechanics. before the first boss was added we neither had nor needed the ability to Jump. it's just weird

once you've defeated the boss, you're given a reward of varying usefulness (the best/most unbalanced reward type is Unites, which are a free heal or gag restock you can do inside or outside of battle. essentially lategame toons can simply choose not to die. riv2u etc.)

and, um. then you get some more merits/stock options/whatever and do it again. and again. and again. and again. and agai

the grind:

so the thing is that tto was a subscription mmo. every addition to the game had to be measured, above all, in terms of "how can we best get kids to beg their parents to give us money." this especially shows in the suit grind:

(source/source)

you have to defeat each boss 78 times in order to get all their laff points - and as you proceed, you have to defeat an increasing amount of cogs to even be allowed into the boss (although once you max you get in for free).

by far the easiest way is to run through the designated HQ facilities - basically, cog fights interspersed with some platforming or minigames. you only collect your merits/whatever at the Very End of the facility. the only way to increase what a facility gives you is if your last battle ends during an "invasion" - a timed period where One Specific Cog replaces all street cogs, usually summoned with boss rewards.

the sellbot HQ grind isn't so bad. bossbot HQ - the endest-game HQ - frequently requires you to do an hour-long facility and on six separate occasions you have to do seven of them. if the invasion ends before your final battle, you have to sit around until someone summons another. if you lose your internet connection because it's 2008, or if your parents make you come to dinner, or if hacking or the game's general bugginess cause a server reset because you're probably in the busiest district for the invasion bonus, you have spent that Entire Hour On Nothing. the CEO (bossbot cog boss) probably also takes an hour because you and your fellow players are 10

this shit, combined with laff points locked behind gardening (time-gated), racing and golfing (multiplayer minigames with absurd requirements), and fishing (RNG-based with some fish being absurdly rare. i watched my mom fish for one every day for a month), meant that maxing a toon took Years, if you managed it ever.

it wasn't, um. it wasn't good

ok so what else is wrong with this game:

i had "aged out of the game" (lol) by the early '10s, so i'm not the best person to do a writeup of the hacking/scripting situation of those days. that said, what i'm going to do is give you a few examples, and i want you to just...look at them

(source)

(source). early '10s youtube was funny i'm trying to decide if i miss it

(source). fun thing to note here is that other players had collision, so a swarm of t-posing toons could just barricade the gag shop if they wanted to

youtube

(video description: toon who has Replaced His Head Model With An Anime Logo throwing thousands of jellybeans at everyone) (cw mild flashing just in case? and also the feather headband accessory)

i should note that the Bring Me To Life vid i started with was client-side, meaning only the player could see their technicolor hellscape. this guy's face was server-side. i do Not Think you should be able to do that

youtube

(video description: a player demonstrating use of a bot to get into the nutty river district, followed by other players using it to go to different game areas)

the above video was posted on august 17th, 2013. if you don't want to watch an Unregistered Hypercam 3 recording at about 5 frames per second, what's going on here is:

the player goes to a specific location and says a specific speedchat phrase.

a bot toon teleports to their location and provides some prompts on how to use it

the player tells the bot, via speedchat, to teleport to the (currently closed from the outside) busiest district so the player can follow

these "taxi toons" were server-sided, persisted across server resets, were made by a future fanserver dev, had younger kids referring to them as a "glitch" as if this were something that could Accidentally Happen, and stayed functional until the game closed

like...a lot of the "hacking" was just baby's first script download. this one - afaict also created by the laughing man head guy - is like...the fact that after years of no substantial game updates, someone effectively programmed their own "QOL feature" (note: not actually good for the poor mid-00s server being turned into a clown car) into a silly disney MMO and it just fucking sat there for a year is just. it's just.

i don't know what this is. this is not Playing The Game Toontown Online. this is nothing. this is everything. there are comments from 2013 on some of these videos saying stuff like "hackers killed toontown", but your game cannot have this happen if it is not already dying

and, like...it was. i'm not sure how many moderators there were by this point, but at the very end of tto, the number of active devs was One. the original devteam recently brought this up at the 20th anniversary celebration: devs just...slowly started getting pulled from the game, one at a time. there were a few updates after bossbot HQ - Field Offices, which i've basically never heard anything good about in their tto form ever; the Silly Meter, a yearly event...thing whose main function was to add unskippable dancing-inanimate-object cutscenes to your street battles; Parties, which...yknow parties were okay actually. i accept parties. but they weren't exactly a Major Game Update like the ones that had come before. in 2011 we gained the ability to Wear Hats. in 2012 the test server got some actual QOL updates that never made it to the main game; the final test server update was some maintenance in february, and then nothing for 18 months. disney was not providing enough resources to address the scripting because disney was not providing enough resources to address toontown. imagine being the last dev standing on an MMO that was older than some of its players, was losing its business model to mobile gaming, and spent most of its life falling apart at the seams. just imagine it, for a second

it couldn't have kept going, not like this.

on august 20, 2013, the closing announcement came: we had a month left of toontown online. the test server shut immediately; subscription refunds went out, and the game became actually F2P for the month; the part of the announcement that went like "we're shifting our focus to other games!" made a bunch of twelve-year-olds hate club penguin as if club penguin wouldn't also close in a few years; all the holiday events went off at once; and...

there wasn't a "thanks for playing!" popup. everyone online just got kicked, all at once. it was finally over

hey wait.

#toontown #toontown online #tto #tft talks #tft stuff #<- this goes in that tag i think #this was like. enrichment. thank you

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feukt-42 · 2 months ago

Text

Yet another post about Leda

You know, its kind of funny, but I've been browsing ER fanfics and fancontent almost daily for a while now (pls help), and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people just. do not want. to put Leda and the gang in their fanfics. The most out of all Miquella's followers I found was Ansbach with 68 fics on Ao3. Leda herself comes at second with 48 fics and the others just kind of fizzle out after that. By comparison, Messmer, another DLC character, already has 500 fics.

Now, I know that this in large part due to the Messmer horny. But still. There's been 1,372 fics released in the ER tag since the DLC released as of me writing this. That doesn't really explain it. A good explanation might be that souls fans like to dwell on the pre-canon lore era we don't get to see, but even then, I remain disappointed by the lack of Leda in those fics as well. I have read several Haligtree-or-adjacent-focused fics written post SotE and few of them feature Leda or the needle knights, which is honestly a shame because Miquella having his own order of knights (almost counterbalance to the cleanrots), is a very interesting idea, and I am starving for Leda interacting with literally any member of that cast, her whole deal is just so interesting. And its not like Miquella doesn't care about her and she's just a weird fanboy, he gave her a wholeass rune and shit.

"But OP," you might be asking, "why dont you just write your own fic then ?". And you see, that is an excellent point, but I am unfortunately a coward with no confidence in my writing skills. So instead, I decide to make this.

I hereby present :

My Leda facts/analysis/interpretation/theories collection !

I am making this mostly to gush about Leda to spark interest in her as a character and maybe give interested writers who have actual skill to use this to get some inspiration. By no means am I suggesting that this is a guide everyone should follow, this is mostly just my inane ramblings about a character i am obsessed with. Still, if it helps someone make something, that's a net positive in my book.

without further ado, let's get into it.

Part 1 : Miscellaneous Facts

Fact number 1 : Leda doesn't see grace (at least her character model implies so):

I don't remember where it was, but I remember seeing a post that had every SotE NPC's eye colour in it. And a cool thing about that was that only a few characters didn't have the grace of gold in their eyes. And I remember specifically getting to Leda, noble knight of Miquella, and finding out that her eyes do not have a single trace of gold in them. They are grey with a blood-red clouding.

And I just found that so interesting it made me make this post, because what does it mean ? How did she lose it ? Did she ever have it in the 1st place ? Some of you might be thinking it's because she follows Miquella and not the GO, but the funny part is that, again, most of the others have it !

Hornsent has it, Ansbach has it, Freyja has it, Ymir has it, Moore has it, even the fucking madding hand has it. So why doesnt Leda ? (this also goes for some of the other NPCs who don't have it but im not spinning them in my head like a microwave so too bad ig)

Fact number 2 : She definitely killed the other needle knights

Ok so I already talked about this somewhere but I don't remember where so let's just start over from the beginning. The description of the Retaliatory Crossed-Tree states there were once more Needle Knights but now there's only one left. Meanwhile, Leda's sword says it "still reeks with the stench of crusted blood that lingers from the cull of her knightly comrades". Love myself a good "can't wash away the blood" trope.

Anyways, I took those two facts together to mean that she killed the other Needle Knights and talked about it in that alleged prior conversation I mentioned, but someone else replied that her "knightly comrades" could very well mean Hornsent and Ansbach, whom she attempts to cull before you reach Enir-Ilim. And I wanted to disagree with that, but I didn't actually have any evidence except "it's funnier this way" so you know, fair's fair. Except ! No it isn't !

When you help kill Hornsent, she says this :

He never placed his full trust in me, even under the effect of Kindly Miquella's spell. He must've recognised something. The scent of the killer that slept within me. The stench of crusted blood.

Mind you, this is before killing Ansbach, and right after killing Hornsent. The crusted blood from the cull of her comrades cannot be theirs, meaning Leda did kill the other NKs.

Fact number 3 : She deadass just smells like blood the whole time we see her

As just stated, we have 2 items describing how Leda just smells like dried blood. This has endless comedic potential imo, hear me out :

You first meet this dignified, knightly woman in Mohgs arena. You don't notice anything wrong with her smell, because of course it smells like blood in here, have you seen the place ?

The next time you meet her is in Scadu Altus. You begin to think something does smell really bad here. It's still not her however, because the Hornsent and his canonically shitstained loincloth are standing like 10 meters away from you, likely overpowering the scent.

You only get to realize its her constantly smelling like blood after the charm is broken and Hornsent leaves, and that coincides perfectly with the reveal that she's just paranoid as fuck.

10/10 olfactive storytelling. I mostly just put this fact here in honor of that Bloodborne bosses ranked by smell post tbh, that shit lives rent-free in my brain.

Character analysis time ! This bit is more given to interpretation so feel free to disagree on this :

Shes really not that bloodthirsty you guys

Alright, so this one might be a bit surprising given we just went over the fact she smells like blood, but the popular interpretation of Leda doing this because she likes killing and shit is just dead wrong to me. I spoke about it before, but there are so many lines of dialogue that suggest otherwise. Hell, even the sword description says she tried her damnedest to get the blood to come off. Here are some of the most telling lines i found (from fextralife/the github with all the text from SotE) :

-Her describing herself as a "killer" in that line about hornsent and crusted blood earlier, she seems to be very blunt and honest about what she does, almost to a self-deprecating point.

-I know I shouldn't let myself... But I suppose it's only natural to feel the weight of one's deeds at times like these. There is plenty left to be done. And I will see to it. <- what else do i even add here

-I don't enjoy casting suspicion on anyone I've called a comrade. But it's a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. We must eradicate all doubt...

-None can deny Sir Ansbach was truly a great man. We can be proud, that we were the last opponents he ever faced.

-Sir Ansbach must have considered it an honourable end, being felled by your hand. After all, the good fellow held you in the highest regard. When we speak of it, we may speak with pride—that we were Sir Ansbach's final adversaries

Those lines seem to be alternate versions of the dialogue you get after helping her kill Ansbach. And oh my fucking goodness gracious, i fucking love the second one. Like ghhhhhh, the grief for a comrade and the guilt and the self-justification and the need to move forward and theres somehow even more blood on her sword that she can't ever wash off but she can't stop here, she has to keep doing this because its not about her for her, its not about her feelings or her guilt its all just for the greater purpose shes reaching towards arghhh its so good.

There's also a notable throughline of her shutting her emotions down more and more as she goes, whether its to better do her job or to follow in miquella's footsteps :

-Unruly emotions only lead to misfortune. All the more reason we need someone like Miquella the Kind.

-Man is a compassionate animal, for better or worse.

-So be it. If you insist upon facing Miquella the Kind, Then I will run you through, whoever you might be.

-A single betrayal, enough to turn the tides… Unfortunate, but I will leave you be, for now.

-I expected things to end differently with you. What a pity

-I suppose it was Sir Ansbach who won you over. Fine. One more heart for my blade to skewer.

Side Note : Those three last ones also read like shes really salty about being betrayed, and that's really juicy because it feels like she trusted you. She trusted you a lot more than most of the others, so it really stings quite a bit to learn you were lying the entire time.

All in all, it really does feel like she has to shut herself down to be a better knight, a more efficient tool for Miquella to wield. It's also quite tragic because she seems to be a compassionate person at heart, she welcomes you into the club, she constantly tries to understand the reasonings for other people's actions, and she tries to find ways to let those she suspects off the hook :

-The hornsent, hmm. On one hand, he trusts Miquella the Kind to bring salvation to his people. With the enchantment lifted, his vengeful passions may once again ignite, but surely he'd be mindful of Kindly Miquella's promise... <- this reads like her trying to convince herself she doesn't have to kill him

It's also very interesting because despite that, she really doesn't seem to be much of a people person :

-But for this very reason, Thiollier is incapable of betrayal. St. Trina's love for Kind Miquella is boundless. She is, after all, his other half. Or perhaps her feelings go beyond even that. Even if she was left behind, I doubt her heart would waver. <- she's just deadass wrong about Thiollier and St Trina

-If you don't meet her before the charm breaks, she does a really awkward introduction and then immediately starts infodumping about her crippling paranoia and zealotry

-Ansbach straight up just tells you : So, you've taken Lady Leda's side. I'm glad she stands with an ally. She tends to overestimate the burden she might carry alone. This is straight up just "oh nice, you finally made a friend, im so glad for you". This implies that Ansbach didn't believe Leda really had anyone on her side before then, and she kinda doesn't tbh. No one is really here because of Leda in the final battle, Dane is here for Miquella, Freyja is here for Radahn, Moore is here to cope with existence, and Hornsent just has an (understandable) hate boner for everything Golden Order. She doesn't really have any friends.

(Also shoutout to Ansbach for being concerned about the people trying to kill him, he really is the goat fr. Also: I've utterly failed you both... No wait grandpa its not your fault im so sorry)

--the funniest moment in the DLC imo : I've come to a realisation... There's ample evidence... Without Kindly Miquella's influence... I'm quite mistrustful of others...

Ah yes of course, the trust issues. Where do I even start.

This woman has nothing but contempt for mankind as a species. She is, as stated earlier, compassionate and tries to be nice to people but she constantly assumes the worst of everyone as a reflex. Her trying to find a way not to kill Hornsent is only because she wholeheartedly believe he will be the worst version of himself as a baseline, and thus thinks of him as a threat who must be dealt with.

-I'm afraid Sir Ansbach will have to be next. He claims he hasn't the spirit to take up his sword again, But in his day, he was the feared commander of the Pureblood Knights, who cleaved open Miquella the Kind with his blood blade. But I doubt it'll be very long... Before he recalls, as I have, the cascading sheets of blood. <- no trust at all

-her dialogue about you "turning on her" also feel like she's resigned about it, like someone who came in expecting failure and was still disappointed, like why did i even try, i should really know better.

-That aside, man is by nature a creature of conquest. They were never saints. They just happened to be on the losing side of a war. <- the classic. What else needs to be said. These are the words of someone who takes war, violence and hatred as a given.

And that leads me to my next point. I think Leda has had a very violent life overall. Some of the shit she says sounds too specific to just be a generalisation:

-But vengeance changes a man.

-Unruly emotions only lead to misfortune.

-Before he recalls, as I have, the cascading sheets of blood.

-One more heart for my blade to skewer.

-The scent of the killer that slept within me.

This all sounds like she's talking from experience, and there's also her skills as a knight : she has the highest hp pools of the gank squad and can 2-3 shot most players. I know gameplay =/=lore but Freyja respects the hell out of her: Lady Leda and honourable Ansbach are of a special breed.

It's a very interesting combination of an extremely skilled knight who is very good at killing, has presumably been living a very violent existence and who trusts no one but herself, but who also hates having to kill and feels really guilty about it, despite having to do it for the sake of her cause.

And I believe that is the crux of her purpose, and why she is going through so much to fulfill it at any cost:

Leda believes intelligent beings are inherently flawed , and can never be trusted to do anything but make each other suffer. Leda is tired of inflicting and receiving violence, and sees little purpose in seeing the good in others. Leda would have probably made a terrific Lord of Frenzied Flame with how little hope she has.

But instead, she found Miquella. Miquella, who dreams of an age of compassion and who is in a position to achieve it, Miquella, who was raised in an order built and maintained through violence and grew to abhor it. Miquella, who Leda probably sees herself in, who Leda trusts blindly and unconditionally, for whom Leda is ready to commit any atrocity, no matter how it makes her feel, because he is her lifeline. He is her very last hope, the only solution short of complete annihilation she can see for mankind to reach pace.

So what if that peace is forced, is all of this suffering truly worth what little free will we can exert onto our world ? Leda has seen what mankind does with its free will, and she is tired of it.

She doesn't care if she lives to see it, she doesn't care if she has to kill every last part of herself in order for the world to see peace. No one will miss her anyway, she's nothing but a blood-soaked murderer. It doesn't matter if she likes these people, friendship and trust aren't worth all this senseless violence.

So she'll keep killing and killing and culling, until her blade is dull with crusted blood and every last obstacle to Miquella's age of compassion is gone. That's what a Needle knight does, is it not ? Kindly Miquella fashioned us as his needles to quell all, to ward away all.

And if Miquella doesn't understand her, it doesn't matter. He's far too good to understand the sacrifices necessary. She'll do what he can't. The other needle knights did not understand this, they were too naive to do what has to be done, so they were a liability. Don't think about their betrayed looks of terror, don't think about the cloying stench of blood sticking to your footsteps, this is your burden, this is what you deserve. You already knew you couldn't trust anyone, why would this be different ?

If Miquella must cast away parts of his very being to have this world then so can you. So sever that part of yourself that says you should be nice, that you should trust those willing to help, it only makes things worse. It will all be worth it in the end.

Phew, i kind of went apeshit while writing that last part. I hadn't really planned all that honestly.

To conclude this essay, I'd like to point out a really fun parallel to draw here. In this analysis, I have described my interpretation of Leda as a very skilled self-loathing blood-soaked knight who is tired of their endless crusade and yet is endlessly pushed forward by their utter devotion to their god, their salvation made flesh, whom they will shield for the atrocities committed in their name by being the sole person to blame. If that doesnt remind you of Messmer, then i think ill just curl up into a ball and yell very loudly.

Thanks for reading till the end of this absolutely nightmarishly long ramble, let me know if you liked it ! And don't hesitate to send any Leda fics you find or write along the way !

#elden ring #shadow of the erdtree #needle knight leda #character analysis #rambles

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pumpkinstrawbrew · 1 year ago

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🆃🅷🅴 🆆🅸⨢.🅲🅷🅸🅽🅶 🅷△🆄🆁.

>>> the grim adventures of jon n' jack. feat batman n' spiderman. <<<

...

it was only a matter of time, before i would have made another crossover with those two. i can't deny, that they are very 1:1 for me, when it comes to comics supervillains. so why not to mix one awesome n' beloved thing with another? esp since funny enough, they do have quite a few similar plot-points. well, the halloween themed costume aside. i mean it goes as far as jack once having the bat-themed boyfriend pal, which reminds me of someone else, i know.

anyho'...

i've tried to make my notes more or less readable here, but they still might be a bit scattered. i attempted to keep them as short as possible, but i just cannot talk 'small'.

1. the first art is low-key based on underdeveloped AU, that i have about the early comic scarecrow n' modern jack meeting n' hitting it off serial killiar style. considering, that both of them possess killing methods, which have a noticable tradmark to it, i imagine that they will leave one hell of a mess behind, while traveling across the country. in that timeline, batman is dead. n' jack's shitty foster dad was killed off earlier on. neither of them knows what to do with themselves, since the people who they had *twisted* emotional conection with are gone. without any direction, they meet in the middle, n' decide that they can as well team-up n' try to make being a villain fun again. jon might experiment on their victims *or torture them if its his ex bullies* n' then give them to jack, who would scoop their brains out and put candle inside their skull. n' uh yeah, he literally did it in the comic. i was honestly surpised that marvel come up with smth that creepy. it really sounds more alined with dc, if anything. but either way, here they are. two *grieving* psychos going downtown. they will make one another so much worse, i imagine. n' they will totally kill that npc dude btw.

2. dark magic n' the drip. or jon n' jack at their corniest. like, jonathan looks like he watched too much the nightmare before christmas n' jack dress up like count dracula for no reason. it's so random-ish n' cheesy. but with this being said, i love both of those designs, n' think, that they really suit the vibe of comic issues in which they were featured. jack always came off as a he-witch to me, but it was nice to see it being played on in a different way. n' then, crane really rocks his own outfit as well. i totally need to draw him in it more often, haha. they dress up for a halloween party for real this time. n' well, i added batman n' spiderman into the mix here, bc i kinda wish that they got to fight / interact with those versions of jon n' jack. it would have been fun for a few reasons. also this can be technically counted as shipping art, but can be viewed as your typical gloating bad guy n' helpless hero thing too. n' to clear any possible questions, i only create stuff with adult peter parker. like cartoon era/late early comics, 20 smth one. i love my spiderman being of age, where he can legally mingle with his villains, not be detained at school lol.

3. the classic four from the timeline, when the comic plots were a bit more ligthearted. aka during the times, when the deadly mercenary n' crazy scientist were robbing banks, instead of harming *torturing* people. i love dark stuff, but there is charm to how 'simple' the scarecrow's and jack's goals once were. n' i love how the scarecrow used to do the lil, dorky dances. it really suits him. n' since at least 2 or maybe, most of jack o' lanterns are southernish in their roots like jon, i had an idea of them having a country dance *in the middle of graveyard* kinda just makes sense to me, haha. batman and spiderman merely happen to find them like that. n' well, it's kinda awkward. esp bc they technically don't do anything bad. i also imagine spiderman being like 'oh, so you have one of those too'. which is mostly a ref to how both the scarecrow n' jack were called 'the reject from land of oz' by other characters. they can rejoice here.

4. the develish & undead duo!! my friend once told me to try n' watch older superhero cartoons, and at first i was like 'welp, they prob be hella boring'. but then i caved in, n' watched a couple of superfriends episodes. as result, i fell in love with their scarecrow's desingh! it was unexpected tbh. usually, i prefer jon's older, classic scarecrow look. so no straw hair, less features exposed, just a hat n' a sack on his head, but their version of him actually did it for me. i find their crane both creepy n' cute. n' i also read on wiki, that he might be undead. so that bit interested me as well. non-human jonathan crane, what a concept! him returning from the grave just to be a menace to batman. n' to accompany him, there is an undead jack o' lantern from the ghost rider comic. his corpse literally got possessed by satan. anyways, both of them raised army of zombies. both of them undead n' prob won't ever get out of their spooky suits, since i don't think that they can. n' funny enough, jack's hometown was called sleepy hollows, if i remember correctly. so they can haunt people there, make it into a truly cursed land.

5. the last one was kinda spontaneous on my part. the other day, i was looking at what kind of action figures the scarecrow n' jack have. saw one, where jon was looking kinda strange, all black n' yellow. which is how i find out that he *apparently* got yellow lantern powers in newer comics, even if it was like for 10 seconds or smth. i didn't read the issue itself, but i found the idea kinda fun, n' his design was decent enough for me to get interested n' wonder what i can do with it. then, a bit later, i saw that jack had a venom-funko figure. i don't think, that he was ever canonically venomized in any of the actual comic issues, but once again, the mere idea of it happening was enough for me to consider doing smth with it. i mean, a venom-like tongue, but its made out of fire? dang. that's kinda cool. so yeah. the yellow lantern scarecrow n' symbiote jack o' lantern being the double trouble. if they weren't enough of a mean goblin-man before, now they surely will be.

#batman #ghost rider comics #spiderman comics #scarecrow #jack o' lantern #jonathan crane #mad jack #dc & marvel #brew draws

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spinjitsuburst · 10 months ago

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prime empire thoughts yes please

1- the world of prime empire overall. what are your ideas about it?

I personally they should've played with the ideas of invisible walls or show us how far the game actually expended. idk maybe that's just me but like the world of prime empire in its whole looks overlooked jgsjgl like there's so much you can do.

I also wanted so bad someone from the outside to interfere with the coding or something as well idk WHY DID WE GET SO LITTLE WITH A SEASON AROUND VIDEO GAMES

2- what are you thoughts about scott? (also does he play a big role in cabinet man? (since you also requested asks about cabinet man))

Cuz I think he is greatly underrated in prime empire (but yknow maybe that's just me)

3- jay's skin. I want all your thoughts about jay's skin. Superstar Rockin Jay should've lasted for much longer or at least become a gag in the future (or yknow the fact that there was a cult created out of it)

anyway yeah I like this season a normal amount. Toootally fine with how they handled it.

Can't wait to read your thoughts about it all ( ouo)

GJHJSHFJKGHJKFDSGH HOOOOO BOY

Ideas about the world of Prime Empire as a whole

OHOHO I HAVE SOOOO MANY MY FRIEND

first of all, most if not all the NPCs have some degree of sentience. That's an idea that I think should've been driven more home by the show itself but Blazey and Okino are not the only characters in the game that have free will and the ability to think for themselves. I believe this so wholeheartedly.

Prime Empire was split into different areas that I wish were explored more (honestly a lot of this season boils down to "I wish it were explored more"): Terra Technica, Terra Karana, and Terra Domina. Terra Technica obviously is the biggest area, with the entry point for players entering the game, the Speedway Five-Billion, Scott's Garage and Jay's Club, and at least one other area for the Dance Competition mini-game. I also think this would be where most of the shops run by NPCs in the game would be.

I think most NPCs reside in this area. To really hammer home the fact that they are PEOPLE, not just assets in the game, I think they have homes within the city. Y'know how in Pokemon games (except ScarVi rip) you can just walk into people's houses and there's NPCs inside? Yea it's like that. Except the NPCs leave the houses and explore as well because they have their own thoughts and lives.

Maybe it's just cuz I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom non-stop and it's taken over my brain but I think about the open-worldness of Prime Empire in a similar manner. You can pretty much go anywhere and do anything within the world of Prime Empire. You can scale buildings (if you have the skills unlocked for it) and find secrets everywhere. And most things respawn at certain intervals so players have the chance to pick them up. Kind of like a MMOPRG sorta vibe

BUT there is a sort of thing like you mentioned above - invisible points that you just can't pass. Like the place is enclosed by some giant wall you can't see, and doesn't let you pass through. If you TRIED you would just be running in place basically, never actually getting anywhere. You can see things beyond where stuck at, but they're just for show - there's nothing actually there to interact with, it just gives the guise of depth.

Basically Prime Empire is meant to feel endless, expansive, big, real, until the reality crashes in that it definitely isn't. And sure most people wouldn't care and would have fun playing anyways, but for those who aren't interested after this illusion is broken for them, discover that hey. How do you get out of here again?

Oh right.

They can't.

And that's when people start kinda freaking out. Which I imagine then Jay or the League of Jays step in to try and calm them down and get them to relax and have fun anyways while Jay waits for the rest of the ninja to arrive.

2. Thoughts about Scott and his role in the Cabinet Man AU!

OHHH MAN I LOVE SCOTT DUDE YOU'RE RIGHT HE'S SO UNDERRATED i think he's a super fascinating character to consider in Prime Empire. Given that Unagami clearly had a plan to cube a bunch of players for his portal, he definitely would've come after Scott first. When did Scott figure this out? Did Scott and Unagami interact in-person before this? How was Scott able to evade Unagami long enough to set up his garage's stealth barrier? He's so so so interesting to me

He's clearly a kind person who wants to help people to some degree (sneaking Jay into the garage with him in the shorts, letting Jay run his club from his garage, inevitably sacrificing himself so the ninja can get away, etc.) but he's also very wary and unwilling to risk himself in a lot of ways. He and Jay clearly come to care about each other to some degree in canon, given Jay seems fairly protective of him

and Scott trusts Jay enough to let him into his personal and secret place

LIKE I DON'T THINK THAT GETS TALKED ABOUT ENOUGH. NOT ONLY DID SCOTT AGREE TO HELP JAY HIDE OUT FROM UNAGAMI BUT HE LET HIM RUN AN ENTIRE CLUB OUT OF A SECRET TUNNEL CONNECTED TO HIS GARAGE

there was no reason for Scott to have done either of these things. Was it desperation because Jay's the first person Scott's seen in 30 years? Maybe. But clearly they care about each other to some degree

as for in the cabinet man AU! Jay considers Scott an older brother type figure. He, Scott, and Unagami actually got along well when Scott first got sucked into the game (the game is a lot newer than it is in the actual show given that Jay was 8 when he entered and there is no way he was in there for 30 years lmao, Jay would've been around 16 when Scott entered the game, Scott being 18 or 19, and Jay was around 21-22 when the ninja enter the picture). Unagami was excited to prove himself and give Scott a fun game experience, after all. But y'know, once Milton Dyer realized what happened.... things soured.

Jay and Scott were pretty much on the run together from then on. They care a lot about each other and Jay's extra devastated when Scott gets cubed. Once Jay and Scott leave the game, Scott takes time to rediscover life and reunite with family, but the two stay in close contact and see each other on a weekly basis for a while. Scott's still one of the first people Jay will reach out to if he needs help or advice with something not-ninja related

3. SUPERSTAR ROCKIN' JAY AAAAAAA

okay okay okay okay so obviously you and i met through skybound content so just in case you don't know yet

i'm. a little. unhinged. about superstar rockin' jay

i have so many thoughts about jay's avatar ranging from "this is my Gender and i want to look like a fucking lego" to "WHY DIDN'T NINJAGO LET HIM KEEP ASPECTS OF THIS" to just white noise in my brain and in the center of that white noise is me rotating his minifigure in my mind

HE'S SO COOL!!! HE'S SO COOL AND I LOVE HIM AND HIS DESIGN IS INCREDIBLE LIKE OKAY okay okay okay okay blue and yellow are contrasting colors that mesh REALLY well together and I think the glamrock persona with stars and triangles and shit looks super incredible and it's just a really nice and appealing design and I think that Jay would have like a v-tuber avatar of SSR Jay after the game cuz like LOOK AT HIM. THIS IS PEAK HEGHHAGJFHKGJKJHKJFHGKJFG god im so normal

this is why people call me the ceo of superstar rockin' jay. that design is every aesthetic of mine mashed into one. i'm so obsessed with this design it consumes my core being.

at the end of the day i too. am superstar rockin' jay

i lost track of the point of this question uhhhhhhhh OH YEA I WISH THEY'D LIKE. BRING IT UP MORE OFTEN LIKE JAY WAS AN IN-GAME IDOL!! HE WAS A PERFORMER!! DID HE HAVE FANS??? IS THERE SUPERSTAR ROCKIN' JAY MERCH???????? he should exist outside of prime empire screams

anyways this was a lot of words i love prime empire i love prime empire so much it's so good and more people need to talk about it please please lpease

#HAT BLESS YOU FOR THIS ASK EHHEHE I LOVE INFODUMPING ABOUT THIS SEASON AAAAAAAAAAAA #runs around in circles #this season is everything to me #jay #jay walker #prime empire #ninjago #superstar rockin' jay #spinjitsu screams #ask #cabinet man au #lego ninjago

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corruptsyd · 2 months ago

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C!Sydney and Whitney's thoughts on one another?

sydney has been haunted by horny thoughts about whitney ever since the Library Choking Incident. how could she not be

when she’s not actively interacting with whitney she’s fantasizing about being dommed by whitney. when she’s actually around whitney and is reminded how annoying she finds her, sydney turns into the hard dom that people in the fandom pretend she is lmao

the dialogue line about sydney wanting to flog whitney after she steals from sirris’s shop…. aughhhhhhhhhhh

will whitney let her be a dom though? absolutely not. she’ll die before she lets the choir girl dom her. maybe with super low dominance and the insistence of pc it could happen but for now it will stay one of sydney’s freaky fantasies about her classmates

and sydney would be fine to be a sub for whitney do not get me wrong. it’s just the moment that whitney starts talking or being annoying, sydney is fantasizing about shoving a ball gag or maybe something else into her mouth

very much into the idea of a threesome with her and pc. if whitney and pc are also hooking up she’s going to look at pc with big sad puppy dog eyes until pc lets her join them.

it’d end up with sydney indulging all her masochist tendencies and just getting Wrecked by whitney and pc. she won’t be able to walk the next day but it’s okay

whitney does not even know what to feel about sydney. especially post-Library Choking Incident. i think she’s so caught off guard with how sydney’s changed because why is one of her easiest bullying targets now horny about it…

once she got over the shock of it all she’d be so down to tease and mess around with sydney a bit… not to the extent that whitney does with pc, but she’d absolutely be more physically aggressive just to make fun of sydney for how shes probably getting wet over it. (spoiler alert: she is)

in a whit/syd/pc scenario, whit would be planning to use syd and pc like they’re both her sluts but it becomes Very Clear very fast that sydney is just such a perfect sub, so much show that Whitney is fine to give pc some control… but only when that control is just being exerted over sydney ofc

in the beautiful world where sydney was somehow able to dom whitney. hooo boy syd would be such a bitch. she’s always nice and gentle with pc even when she’s in that role, but with whitney she does not gaf (well maybe a little. she’s always going to respect safe words and stuff but you must also consider that whitney would never stoop as low as to use a safe word). pc watching in the corner with their jaw on the floor as Choir Girl Sydney has Delinquent Mean Girl Whitney tied up and near the point of tears

all that being said. i was thinking of a fic idea where like… pc doesn’t exist. so who’s going to corrupt sydney? who’s going to be whitney’s slut? you see where i’m going here. it’d be a little ooc but i love the idea of a low purity sydney finally giving into lust because she wants her bully to bend her over a desk and fuck her like an animal ^_^ and whitney would have so much fun breaking her down…

i also just love whit/syd/pc threesome concepts (really any syd/pc/npc threesome concept lol) and wanna explore those more in the future 🤭

#anon #ask #yapping #dol #sydney the faithful #sydney the fallen #degrees of lewdity #dolgl #whitney the bully

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decks-writing-blog · 1 month ago

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Free Them Chapter 1/3: The Hole in the Simulation

Summary: Gordon frees the AI from the simulation.

[A/N] Another fic I finished writing like 2 months ago but didn't have time to edit and upload because I was busy with Halloween stuff. Here it finally is though. Also, I'm sure people have done Aperture AU's with the HLVRAI cast before but this is my take on the idea.

“I believe you.”

It was barely more than a whisper but it had Gordon flinching anyway. He spun his desk chair around to confront the intruder.

Doug Rattmann. His gaze averted, he stood in front of Gordon’s cubicle, a steaming cup of coffee in his thin hands.

“Huh? What?”

“I believe you,” Doug repeated.

Gordon wasn’t in the mood for company but he wasn’t quite frustrated enough to be rude about it either. “Uh… thanks. What do you believe me about exactly?”

“The AI in the test simulation you played. You said they’re alive and thinking and feeling. I believe you.”

In hindsight, he couldn’t have possibly been referring to anything else. Since finishing it, the amount of times Gordon had argued with his co-workers had been rather high. It’s all anyone talked about with him anymore. Doug believing him wasn’t surprising. Rumor had it he thought that the Companion Cubes were alive. Still though, it was nice to be believed for a change.

“It makes sense,” Doug continued. “We have all those brain scans for the GLaDOS project and the simulation used them create its characters, right? That’s what I’d heard anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Borrowing them took some convincing but we did it.” As head of the simulation project, using those scans had been Gordon’s idea. The plan was to create as realistic a digital world as possible so having the simulation model it’s most prominent NPC’s off of real human brain data made sense, right?

The ‘little’ prank his coworkers had played on him by telling the simulation to treat the world like a violent video game and even directly putting the Resonance Cascade in had helped with that by really pushing the limits of it. But that didn’t mean Gordon was happy about it. It was supposed to have just been a friendly gameified workweek at Black Mesa, mostly focused on interacting with the world and the NPC’s in it. But violent or not, the simulation had still modeled the main NPC’s off of real brain data and it had done a better job of it than Gordon had predicted even if the others didn’t believe him about that. They hadn’t talked to any of the Science Team or Benrey so they didn’t know.

Doug shifted his hold on his coffee mug as his eyes darted to the opposite side of Gordon’s cubicle, never once resting on Gordon directly. “So the AIs basically have their own little brains. The others say the simulation isn’t that advanced yet and that proof of that is the fact that we’re nowhere close to ready to put Cave’s brain into a GLaDOS machine yet. But making a brain is different than uploading one. The AIs are alive but they’re trapped. You should free them.”

Gordon had thought about doing something with the simulation a few times. Find a way to keep it running even despite his coworkers rightful objections over how much power that took. He’d even been thinking about taking it to Cave Johnson himself because he might sign off on the idea even just to see if anything happened if the simulation was allowed to run indefinitely. The main external thing making him hesitate had been the chance that Cave Johnson might decide to shut it down entirely. He was known for being an asshole just for the sake of being one sometimes. But ‘freeing them’ didn’t exactly describe that. “What do you mean ‘free them’?’

“Give them a way to interact with the world. The real one. Or… what we all believe to be the real world. Who knows if it is in actuality? I’m not sure how. You have much more experienced with the simulation than I. But I’m sure that they are trapped and that you can help them if you try.”

Listening to what Doug Rattmann had to say when it came to anything touching on what was reality or not, maybe wasn’t wise. But despite all his eccentricities, he didn’t get his position at Aperture out of luck or nepotism. He was at least as smart as anyone else here, probably more so given all the, ‘you must be crazy’s he no doubt had to deal with while on his way to his current position. Something Gordon now had a small taste of with being called ‘crazy’ for believing his AI friends were real. … Maybe Doug was right and the Companion Cubes were sentient too. A thought to chew on later. First came this ‘free them’ idea.

“I’ll think about it, I guess. And if I come up with a way to ‘free them’ or whatever, I will.” Assuming it was reasonably possible to do anyway.

“Good. Good.” Doug nodded. “I hope to meet the AIs if ever given the chance.”

“Uh, I’ll keep you up to date on them then.” If for no other reason than Gordon appreciated being believed finally.

Conversation apparently done, Doug turned and left. No ‘goodbye’ or where to reliably find him for the promised AI updates. Oh well. Doug was made his way around the labs fairly often so no doubt Gordon would run into him again eventually.

Dr. Coomer had said Gordon’s suit had a hole in it that he’d wanted to crawl through. Scared out of his mind – it had all felt so real – at the time, Gordon typically tried not to think too much about it. The hand that had been cut off was even the same one he was missing in real life – supposedly not planned by his coworkers – so it had brought back a lot of that old turmoil. (In real life, he thankfully didn’t have a gunhand but instead a prosthetic, high-tech and made by Aperture so not exactly normal but a more proper hand nonetheless.) Which was why it had taken him so long to finally come back to considering the words themselves, brought on by Doug’s suggestion.

The ‘hole’ Dr. Coomer had been talking about hadn’t been in the one the HEV suit. Crawling into Gordon’s virtual body wouldn’t have brought him any closer to the real world. No the hole could only be referring the hole in the simulation itself that allowed Gordon to access it. So in theory all Gordon had to do was create some more holes, ones that could be ‘crawled through’ to reach the real world.

Far easier said than done but this was Aperture Science. They did what they must because they could for the good of everyone. In this case, specifically for the good of Gordon’s AI pals. Aperture was also an expert in all things robots. A whole big team of people were literally working daily on creating a giant robot that would be in charge of the whole facility. Gordon was not looking forward to when it was finished and Cave Johnson’s brain was put into it as was the plan, but it did result in there being lots of robot resources around. Making robots an obvious thing to consider.

All he had to do was make some robot bodies that could hopefully house the AIs and hook them up to the simulation so his friends could crawl into them. It wouldn’t be easy but was well within his capabilities. The hard part would be the physical aspect, actually building the robots.

The models around the lab currently were too limited. Neither of the kinds of turrets could go anywhere under their own power – not that Gordon would trust the Science Team in turret bodies anyway given how trigger happy they all were. And the cores weren’t complete yet and thus their railings weren’t done being built, and even when they were, they’d only be in certain places. Gordon needed to make robot bodies that moved entirely under their own power. Making them look human and like their intended recipient's model from the simulation was tempting but he did not have the skills to pull something like that off. Nor did the facility have the means to easily build such parts anyway. He had to work with what was available.

Thus ultimately what he ended up with was a design for a larger core with arm and leg attachments. With help from the Robot Assembly Department he even got it built. It wasn’t the most elegant thing in the world but it would do especially as a test of his ‘hole in the simulation’ theory.

Telling people what he was doing got him more ‘are you crazy?’ looks and even a few comments but the simulation project was his baby so he was free to do with it whatever he wanted. Unless someone above him stepped in and interfered anyway but if need be he could probably find a way to frame this as being good for the company too. Thankfully no one seemed inclined to try that route. Thus he had help hooking the robot’s empty ‘brain’ up to the simulation before strapping himself in as well.

Naturally it dropped him in front of the Chuck-E-Cheese. Next to him was the empty robot, a copy of his player model because that was the quickest to implement. Based off how he looked in real life but low poly, it had a weird and creepy vibe to it. Getting the graphics to look realistic and/or pretty for this project wasn’t high priority yet and thus readable had been the only thing they’d gone for. He quickly turned away and made his way into the restaurant, leaving it out there for now.

Nervous about what he could say to the team, he hadn’t run the simulation since the video game had completed. As a result, everything was exactly how he’d left it. The birthday party decorations were still up and his pals were seated around the table. … Mr. Coolatta was missing though. Gordon could’ve sworn he’d been in the corner. But it had been a several months, misremebering such a small detail wasn’t out of the question.

The team of course wouldn’t know it had been months since last they’d interacted. To them, Gordon would’ve just left and come back after only a few minutes. Thus it wasn’t surprising Dr. Coomer stood to greet him with a smile as he reached them but that didn’t stop it from feeling weird. By all rights, the three of them should be angry with him for abandoning them so long. But they didn’t know and thus weren’t. Hopefully if they ever found out how long it had been, they wouldn’t mind.

“Hello, Gordon! Did you get my message?”

“I did, yeah.” It had come to him in the moments he was being drawn out of the simulation. Something that shouldn’t have been possible. Which had made it the final nail in the coffin for convincing him that these AI’s had gained self-awareness. “And uh… I think I might have something better than putting you in a different video game.”

“So this is a video game then?” Bubby asked as he stood too.

Admitting it at this point wouldn’t hurt since he had a solution… hopefully. “Yeah. It’s uh… it’s a video game. Or maybe more accurately it’s a simulation that was told to host a video game inside itself so it made a video game world out of its given assets.” Including creating more when such was needed, like the aliens and the Chuck-E-Cheese. How it had come up with said Chuck-E-Cheese was still a mystery. But that was more proof that this project had gotten more complex than intended.

“I guess that makes sense,” Tommy said. “But… that means… that means we’re not real, right? You’re the only one who’s real.”

“Uh… I think you guys are real. I mean, something existing only in a digital space doesn’t mean it’s not real, right? You exist in the computer. All my thoughts are electric pulses in my brain. You’re thoughts are the same just with less organic matter involved.”

“I think, therefore I am,” Dr. Coomer said. “What is your idea though? How are you going to make the fact that the world we exist in depends entirely on how long you’re willing to leave it running for, better?”

“Right, yeah, that. It’s why I’m here.” Despite the reasonable amount of confidence he’d had coming in, he was suddenly not so sure anymore. This was the reason he’d avoided coming back. How did you tell someone that their world, everything they knew, was just a test for a bigger project? “First though I should say that I’m not a theoretical physicist, that was a lie for the game. I actually work almost entirely with computers. I kinda made this simulation, with help but… I was in charge of most of it.”

“You’re God then?” Bubby interrupted, not sounding terribly impressed.

“Not really. I created the program and gave it stuff to work with but it put it all together, procedural generation and all that. So if anything, I created the god that created you. But anyway that means I’m basically an expert on it. Despite that, I don’t know for an absolute fact that my idea will work. It’s worth a try ‘cause it might but don’t get your hopes up too high yet. Now that you’ve been warned though, I guess there’s nothing else to do but try it, huh? Follow me.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and led the way back outside. Out here it was more obvious than ever they were in a simulation. The parking lot surrounding them extended all the way to the horizon. The game had ended after all, the simulation continued but it wouldn’t keep building the game unless told to resume doing so.

The robot’s empty model stood a few few away from the entrance, still creepy as ever. If this worked Gordon would insist a different model be used for the next ones.

“Another you?” Tommy asked as they gathered in a semi-circle around it.

“No. It just looks like me because it’s the model that was easiest to implement for this test. Its not even the same kind of entity, I altered it quite a bit. Think of it as a hole in the simulation. There’s an empty robot on the other side. I’m hoping you can use this as a gateway to that robot and thus uh… be free of the simulation.”

“There’s only one,” Bubby said. “You expect us to share a robot body or something?”

“No. I only made one because I’m not sure if it’ll work. If it does, I’ll make more for everyone else. But uh… I guess that means you guys have to decide who gets to try it first.” In hindsight, maybe Gordon should’ve just made three of them. Only freeing one from the simulation when the other two were right here was uncomfortable to say the least.

“If this works, will Sunkist get a robot doggy body too?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah, I could probably do that.” Gordon hadn’t given any real thought to Sunkist before, too focused on his friends’ freedom – though could he really call them friends when their relationship was based on a lie? But it should be doable.

“Okay. Be sure to make her perfect. I’ll go later because I want to go with her. So you two could um… play rock-paper-scissors for this one.”

“On guard Bubby!” Dr. Coomer snapped around to face him, raising his hands, ready for the duel.

With a shrug, Bubby complied. “Rock, paper, scissors,” they said in unison. Bubby landed on rock and Dr. Coomer, paper. “Damn it. Best two out of three.”

“You’re on!”

“Rock, paper, scissors,” they said in unison again. This time Bubby landed on paper and Dr. Coomer scissors. How he did it when his model shouldn’t be able to make that gesture was a mystery. But if anyone could figure out how to cheat in a more complex hand gesture from within the game, it would be him.

Stepping back, Dr. Coomer raised his fist in the air. “Victory!”

Bubby crossed his arms with a small huff. “Whatever, cheater. I don’t wanna be a fucking guinea pig anyway.”

Dr. Coomer turned to face the empty player model. “How do I step in?”

“I was kinda hoping you’d know since you’re the one who tried it with me.”

“Hmm… I guess I did, huh? There’s no way it would’ve worked with you though, would it?”

“I doubt it. At best you would’ve just broken the equipment I use to connect to the simulation.” It was intensive enough that Gordon had to be eased out of it, woken from the pseudo-sleep state it put him in. So getting jerked out of it as the equipment broke wouldn’t have been great but it wouldn’t have seriously hurt him, it had failsafes in place after all. Not that that would’ve made it not scary. “But even if it hadn’t worked, you wouldn’t have been able to actually interact with the world in any way. You would’ve just been stuck in VR pod.”

“Another reason to be glad that plan failed then. But I guess there’s nothing else to do but to try with this. See you on the other side hopefully. You too Bubby and Tommy! Let’s’a go!”

Stepping towards it, Dr. Coomer lifted hand to touch its chest. At first just pressing against it but then with a little more effort, clipping into it. This ‘player’ entity had been altered to allow for this interaction, hopefully creating a passage through it into the robot on the other side but the model hadn’t been. It jerked and spamsed as Dr. Coomer pushed more of himself through. The blank face made it creepy and unsettling to watch. Gordon forced himself to not look away until Dr. Coomer was entirely within it. A few seconds later, the model stilled.

“Did it work?” Bubby took a step closer.

“Something happened,” Tommy said, mirroring Gordon’s thought. Something had happened, whether that something was it working was hard to tell currently.

“I’ll uh… have to disconnect and see. So I’ll be… not right back but back as soon as I can.”

“Okay, see you soon, Mr. Freeman.”

As always it was like waking from a nap. Never a restful nap though because it wasn’t a restful experience most of the time. The experience allowed him to feel and even smell everything. Even if it wasn’t quite as strong as real life currently that still included the pain of having his hand cut off and the stench of rot. They hadn’t implemented taste yet but they were getting there.

Once he was finally pulled fully back into reality, the release sequence began. Starting with the helmet encasing his entire head. As the most important part, the computer took it off for him, keeping his hands strapped to his sides. Once it was off though, he could finally see the pod around him. Unfortunately he could smell it too.

Supposedly the Cryo team had sent over only pods no one had died in but all three of them had a weird smell that Gordon’s team could never quite banish. Even if he couldn’t tell what it was exactly, it never failed to make him feel unwell. He should’ve insisted harder they create their immersive VR pod from scratch. They’d had to replace most of the internals anyway. But now that they’d put that work in, he couldn’t exactly justify it.

Thankfully because it wasn’t cryosleep, just deep VR integration, it took only a minute or so before the lid was allowed to pop open, letting in fresh air. Unstrapping himself, he pushed it the rest of the way open and stepped out into the test room.

Small and circular, it had contained only the pod and it’s backup on the other side of the room. Said backup pod had been gutted and messily altered to connect to the robot’s empty ‘brain’. That robot had been facing him when he’d gone in. Now though, it was facing away, seemingly studying the nest of bundled wires and cables that had become of the pods inner workings. Which could only mean that it had worked, right?

Gordon took a step closer. “Uh… Dr. Coomer?”

The large core with arms and legs turned face him. Its eye, capable of being any colour was set to deep green; a fitting colour for Dr. Coomer. “Hello, Gordon!” The voice and tone was exactly the same.

“Did it work?”

“Is this the real world and not another layer of the simulation?”

“This real.” Probably anyway.

“Then I would say that it did work. And Gordon, it is beautiful!” The panels on the core body were designed for emoting, allowing him to widen his eye in awe. “I have never seen anything more beautiful! I can not… there are no words to express how grateful I am for this experience, Gordon. Thank you.”

“Wow. I’m… glad it worked.” Gordon should’ve thought of this a long time ago. He’d have to thank Doug for ultimately leading him to the idea whenever he next came around. “Wow, I actually did it. How you feeling? Everything working like it’s supposed to and stuff?”

“I assume so.” He turned to the side and did a little back and forth march. There was a slight wobble to his stride but nothing egregious. At worst mild adjustments might be needed to improve his balance.

“Good. Good. Let’s go um… I’ll show you around and do some tests and stuff.” Introduce him to people so they could finally see what Gordon meant when he’d told them the AI’s had gained sentience. While also making sure everything worked as intended.

“What about Bubby and Tommy, Gordon? Will you go back for them?”

“Of course. I’ll make some more robots for them now that we know for sure it works.” They’d all be free in no time. … Or maybe not ‘no time’ but soon.

Next Chapter

#hlvrai #aperture AU #hlvrai gordon #dr. coomer #bubby #tommy coolatta

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saphirreesuccudus · 8 months ago

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Hey! I was scrolling through the gta v x reader tag and noticed you’re doing requests! :D I haven’t seen many x reader fics like this and I was wondering if you’d be up to writing a one-shot (maybe) where the reader is the gta v online protag/custom character? The reader would essentially have the same reputation as the online protag (seen as dangerous and kinda insane by the npcs we interact with).

Could it also be a Trevor x fem!reader where the two know each other, nothing too sexual (but definitely inline with Trevor’s character lol)

I think I’ve only seen one or two other fics with the online protag and it’d be fun and interesting seeing your take on them since they’re essentially just the player’s custom character

Thank you!

𝒯𝓇𝑒𝓋𝑜𝓇 𝒫𝒽𝒾𝓁𝒾𝓅𝓈 𝒳 𝐹𝑒𝓂 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓇

𝒢𝑒𝓃𝓇𝑒: 𝐹𝓁𝓊𝒻𝒻

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: 𝐵𝒾𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝒯𝓇𝑒𝓋𝑜𝓇 𝒷𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒽𝒾𝓂𝓈𝑒𝓁𝒻 (𝒶 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓉)

You recently moved to San Andreas, you couldn’t afford to move into a tiny apartment that costed more than a hospital bill in Los Santos, so you were stuck getting a tiny trailer in Sandy shores. You tried your best getting used to the neighbors, and the heat of the desert, but being surrounded by drug heads didn’t help, especially the one that lived across from you. You found him interesting nonetheless, you didn’t know if it was how he acted, or if you find him attractive. Probably the first, right? Whenever you looked outside, you’d see him wandering around the front lawn, talking to himself, and he’d even come home either covered in blood or a truck covered in blood.

But you couldn’t keep yourself from finding that a bit attractive, at least he was interesting, and maybe he was a hunter or butcher? Nothing really stood out that made you think it was human blood anyways. Maybe you’re just on edge or being judgemental. You decided you would wake up the next morning and Introduce yourself to him.

The next morning came, leading you to getting ready and heading across the street. The man was sitting on a love seat on the front porch with a cigarette in between his lips.

“Good Morning”

You called out to him.

“Who are you?”

The man asked, taking the cigarette and putting it out, using the bottom of his work boots.

“I’m ___, I live across the street”

You told him.

“Are you Chinese or anything like that?”

He asked, clearly on edge. “I don’t want those fuckers coming in ruining my business” he said, clearly upset this time.

“No, I’m not Chinese”

You told him, you didn’t know what his issue was. Racism was obviously common, but what did he mean by business? And what did they do to his business?

“Well, what’s your name?” You asked him.

“You can just call me T” he said, “‘right sugar?”

He told you, trying to seem more calm, not wanting to scare you off.

“Nice name”

You said. “You mind if I step up on the porch?” You asked

“Go ahead” he said, pushing out a stool for you to sit on.

You headed up, sitting on the stool. It was a lot cooler under the overhang, and you could hear a faint wind chime in the distance. It was pretty calming, which seemed to contrast the owner a lot.

You felt a calloused hand work it’s way onto your thigh, looking over to see who’s hand it was, and of course, it was Trevor’s. The minute he saw he was caught, he moved his hand.

“Anyways, where did you come from?” He asked you.

“I’m from _”

You replied, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“Oh, really? I see it” he told you

“What do you mean?” You asked him, being confused.

“I heard that place has some of the most beautiful women, am I wrong? Or am I right?” He asked you, hoping you’d get the idea of what he’s trying to stay

“Never heard that, but I guess it’s also depends on a matter of opinions.”

You stated, beginning to fidget with your fingers.

“Damn, can an old man not give a young lady a compliment?” He said, slightly upset.

“Never said you couldn’t, just don’t think you can generalize a whole area. But I’ve seen a few pretty girls”

You replied.

“It’s not that deep sugar tits, I just find you really pretty. And from what I’ve seen, you’re pretty everywhere” he said

“Oh, thank you” you replied. “I don’t think you’re too bad looking yourself”

You told him, feeling him rub at your thigh, reaching to your inner thigh

#trevor philips #gta 5 #gta v #gta v trevor #los santos

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elle-thereafter · 8 months ago

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For the fic writer asks: 12, 14, 29? :D

12: A trope you’re really into right now

I don't know the succinct way to describe this trope, but I'm really enjoying stories that delve into the ideas around regretting life choices and/or grieving the life you once had or could have had with different choices. Maybe it's just because I'm getting older and gaining perspective on my own life, but I'm really enjoying stories about complicated grief and regret, like super complicated. In CR especially, Ashton reframing his perception of his life and the life he thought he should have had is fascinating. All the recent stuff with Liliana, how she slid down a slippery slope into what is effectively a cult, and both regrets and rationalises those choices. I suspect also we'll get some flavours of this with Astrid's appearance too. There is something really interesting about the grey area where victims can also become perpetrators, and neither negates the reality or validity of the other. It's messy, and I really like messy, complex characters. I particularly like them when they are just becoming aware of and seriously start to reckon with their own messiness. Which way will they slide? Will they follow a path of redemption? Or will they double-down and pursue a darker path? Both options fascinate me so the whole trope and all its sub-tropes are just very tasty.

14: Where do you get your inspiration?

A ton of it comes from gaps and open questions in canon. I can't help but wonder about gaps, and that gets my brain going with "what if" and possible ways to fill in that gap, and eventually all that speculation and guessing sometimes leads to a story.

I also like prompts. Give me a single scenario or "what if" or a "what would it take to make character X do thing Y when thing Y seems wildly out of character". I also love subtle breadcrumbs that hint at hidden complexity: in the most recent episode revealing Essek in C3, there is some subtle stuff in how Matt has Essek react to the idea of Astrid, and later actually interact with Astrid: both before Astrid knows who he is and after. It immediately sent my brain off into analysis/speculation mode, and if I was the sort of person who could work on more than one writing project at once I'd already be writing a speculative one shot about it.

I'm also finding more and more I get struck by inspiration when I'm less strict about the particulars of my plot and am willing to let the characters lead more. Since starting to DM a long-running campaign with friends 5 years ago, my whole idea of how to plan and plot a story has changed a lot because when I'm DMing I have to leave a huge amount of space and flex for my players to make choices. I've adopted a lot of that flex into my narrative writing, and am way more aware of the choices the characters want to make and less rigid about forcing them to make choices I think I need them to make.

Before DMing I spent a lot of time worrying about getting the plot details just right before I started writing anything, and often would get stuck somewhere in the middle when the characters started to feel less like real people and more like soulless puppets, which led me to abandon most of my projects. Now I have only a very loose idea of the plot - just some preferred goals and themes in mind - and I'm more trusting that the plot will sort itself out as I go. It's been really freeing, and I'm finding all kinds of inspiration in the characters being allowed to do things and say things I didn't expect or plan for, and finding all kinds of interesting ways to use bits of set dressing from previous chapters so in retrospect they look like breadcrumbs and foreshadowing but actually, when I first wrote that little thing I had no longer-term plans for it. Two of the three major NPCs in Gate Building started as narrative conveniences and then became really integral to the story: I ended up with some really great narrative foils I didn't plan for, and to me that's just super cool!

29: How easy is it for you to come up with titles?

The answer is "it depends". Mostly it depends on when I need to come up with the title.

If I'm coming up with the title of something like a short fic or a chapter after it's written, I don't find it too difficult. I usually have a little note doc with various bits and pieces relevant to the project, and in there somewhere will be a place where misc title ideas start to organically collect. During the writing some get added, some get removed, some get tinkered with in the margins as I get a clearer and clearer picture of what it is I'm writing and how it's turning out. The closer I get to being done with the fic or chapter, the more the title ideas get refined, and almost always a clear winner pops out during the first editing phase when I'm tightening up the themes and sculpting things to better serve those themes.

If I have to come up with a title that has to stick before I finish something, that's way, way harder. When I decided to publish Gate Building as a WIP that title was a real challenge because I didn't really know yet how things were going to go, all I had was the first 5 chapters and some vague goals, themes and intentions. At the time I thought it was going to be more light-hearted than it's turned out to be, and the title definitely reflects that assumption; it's possible at some point I'll drop the overly complicated tagline and just leave it as "Gate Building".

WIP titles are hard if there's pressure on them to stick around because I don't yet have complete understanding of the shape of the thing, but if it's just temporary much like anyone else I'll call it any old thing. Like, my current WIP Gate Building chapter is just called "Percy" because that's the POV I'm in. Sometimes my WIP title is just the goal of the chapter if it can be stated in a concise way, mostly as a reminder of what the primary goal is.

I do like my titles to be little breadcrumbs about the chapter or the story, and they often refer to more than one thing. Sometimes I'll get stuck for a while trying to be too clever, and my rule is if I can't find a clever title by the time my editing passes are just about typos and grammar, then probably one doesn't exist so I should stop searching for it. But I do like titles that become little riddles, and can be appreciated differently after the chapter's been read. Probably this is mostly for me. :D

---

Want to ask me more things? Here are the questions!

#fic writer ask meme #ask game #ask me anything #cr3 spoilers #critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #el talks

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flightyquinn · 6 months ago

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Because most creative people are treating AI the way conservatives treat LGBT people and immigrants, and you all find the people actually giving it a chance tedious. Next question.

In all seriousness, though. I love AI as a creative. No, I don't let it do an entire project for me, but it helps with parts where I have little skill, and it helps with parts that are just time consuming but not particularly involved. I use AI to turn my really shitty art into decently passable art (pretty much exclusively for TTRPG character art and tokens). Sometimes I use ChatGPT when I have writer's block, basically the same way I used to use random generator sites like Seventh Sanctum - a way to get basic ideas and to rubber duck what it is I really want to do.

I wish good generative AI had dropped just a little sooner, back when I was doing NPC dialogue for a now-released project.

A big part of it that I had to tackle pretty much solo was creating the various generic "barks" that random characters will say in passing as you're walking by, or interacting with generic shopkeepers. They have very little personality to them, because it's just a sentence, occasionally two, and has to be shared across multiple NPCs, but it still adds up to hundreds of lines of dialogue because you need to have different lines for a handful of basic personality types (chipper, surly, morose, etc...), and a couple for each type as well, to ensure the lines don't get too repetitive.

Having to hand write all those lines and make sure they're all unique enough took a bigger chunk of my time than you might think, but they needed to be there, to make the world not feel lifeless. The time I spent writing them all out by hand could have been used on writing out actual meaningful dialogue and getting some of the quests/characters that had to be cut for time implemented.

Yeah, you can use AI to be lazy too, but lazy people are good at finding ways to be lazy even without AI. How many times have professional commercial artists been caught stealing assets or tracing other people's work?

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open-hearth-rpg · 5 months ago

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#RPGaDay2024

Compelling Characters

I love making up NPCs– besides a solid session zero, it’s probably my favorite activity outside of running a great session. So while I have run from modules (like Fearful Symmetries which I mentioned yesterday), I more often than not populate them with my own people. I’ll borrow names and some details, but don’t look beyond that.

There are exceptions. The one which made me love every single NPC presented is Strangers in Prax, one of the later Avalon Hill modules for Runequest. It takes place in the River of Cradles, the Valley of Prax. imagine a distant border province, overseen by a foreign empire. The key to the area lies in the presence of the city of Pavis and “The Big Rubble” a great ancient city, long destroyed now serving as a beacon for adventures to match their wits against the new monsters and old traps which fill it. Explaining that would take years.

Each story in Strangers centers around a foreigner (or group of foreigners) and the plots and events which occur when they arrive in Prax. If the PCs themselves are outsiders, this gives them a chance to build sympathy-- if the characters are locals you can use these characters to showcase the strangeness of the outside world. And bottom line, all of the NPCs presented here are fun-- wonderfully interesting, with conflicting motivations and strong personalities.

First you have Barran the Monster-Hunter, a wild Ahab-like figure who can draw you into a mythic quest which becomes a mix of Moby Dick and Jonah. He’s great, his backstory’s wild and he’s not one-dimensional. Like all of the characters in this book, Barran offers a ton of hooks, spin-off stories, and future adventures. Any one could be the backbone for a campaign.

Second Arlaten the Magus arrives as a representative of strange (and feared) magics from a far-off land. He decides to set up his shop in the middle of the Big Rubble. Arlaten serves as a great potential patron for characters in the setting. It has opportunities for misunderstandings and learning about the ways of a land far enough away to be almost a myth. He (and his put upon assistant) are dynamite, contradictory, and compelling. There’s a lot of set up, a scenario for helping him get set up, and then another for defending his stead in a hostile land.

The third section deals with agents of the occupying force, the Lunar Empire. Powerful figures called the Lunar Coders have been sent to survey the area and deal with a few problematic rebels. The Coders provide an opportunity to present interesting NPCs who really believe in the mission and role of their Empire. In Gloranthan materials, the Lunar Empire often fills the role of “The Evil Empire” but that status is questionable. The nature and personality of the Coders themselves puts that question to the players.

The Coder section gives the most opportunity for the players to play for or against the NPCs presented. In some ways, the Coders seem like a classic adventuring party-- with internal drama, very different backgrounds, and strange abilities rarely seen elsewhere. They can serve as a dark or a bright mirror for the PCs. As the Coders get tangled deeper in the politics of the area, the players may find themselves trying to understand those politics more deeply.

More importantly every single one of these characters has depth, hooks, wonderfully presented interactions, and just sings. It’s the best ensemble of NPCs I’ve ever seen. They’re great ambiguous allies and enemies.

The structure and concept of all of these stories absolutely hum– and could, with some work, be adapted for other fantasy games. It’s worth reading.

OOH if we’re talking about compelling characters in terms of templates for PCs, I have to go with Apocalypse Keys. A well-made playbook is a treasure. It offers an idea you can grasp and a theme you can build on. But these best of these dig deep into that. They allow players to matter to the story as a whole: they shape play without dominating it. Apocalypse Keys does that: each different combo of monsters makes for a different series, even if you run the same missions.

Every playbook is rich and evocative, but also has plenty of room to make it your own. I’ve seen the same playbook run by different players and they can be unrecognizable as coming from the same source. You have a variety of directions and dials to craft your terribly broken monstrous protagonist. Moves don’t double down on one another, instead they spiral out in wild new directions. I love how thick, rich, and complicated Apocalypse Keys' playbooks are. There’s a kitchen-sink, messy approach that– to me– feels stronger than a tightened, relentlessly balanced approach.

#ttrpg #rpg #age of ravens #open hearth gaming #rpgaday2024 #glorantha #apocalypse keys #evil hat productions

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auntieashleydark · 1 year ago

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I really like a lot of what went into the 13th Age RPG. Every so oftent, I play with the idae of running a campaign, dreaming up setting details and story hooks.

The setting, the Dragon Empire, is a fantastic combination of all the best in d20 gonzo kitchen sink high fantasy. It's presented in a form that, for me at least, fires the imagination and gives rise to a hundred stories. The Icons, who in 13th age serve the story functions usually performed by gods and epic NPCs, are an abundant source of story ideas.

Then I read the rules again. Oh, the rules...

Most of 13th Age is D&D 4.5, in the same way that original Pathfinder was D&D 3.75. The designers streamlined the system and tried to address many of the criticisms of D&D 4, but it's definitely got that flavor.

The parts of the system that aren't a "good bits version" of D&D 4 are a handful of narrative/story game mechanics that intend to give the game open-ended, player-driven gameplay. This includes a more abstract skill system, giving each character a unique story element, and the details of how PCs and Icons interact.

The D&D side of the system runs on number crunching, clearly defined (mostly combat-oriented) powers, and finding a use for every one of those polyhedral math rocks.

The problem is, the story game bits and D&D 4 bits aren't very smoothly integrated. I can't even say they're clumsily welded on; more like duck-taped in place.

In practice, the game runs by D&D-style rules, except when it doesn't. The two sides of the system run on entirely different premises, which makes for a jarring shift, especially when a player has an intuitive grasp of one side of the system, but not the other. A

The story game mechanics aren't fully realized. It's sometimes as if the designers spent most of their development time balancing the D&D part, and didn't have enough time left to come up with examples or polished mechanics for the story bits.

Almost all of the character progression centers on the D&D style mechanics, which are almost all about killing things. Little changes on the story side of the character, meaning that story-oriented players feel short-changed by the system.

All of which disappoints me, as a story-oriented GM. I love the setting. The setting chapters are a fine example of providing enough detail to give the world a unique flavor, while still giving folks looking for a D&D vibe what they're after, and also leaving plenty of room for GMs to make it their own.

I'd love to play in that room but I'd rather the balance of D&D to story game was the other way around, both for my own style, and for the sake of getting story-oriented players into the game.

They're doing a second edition now, and i can only hope they're giving adequate time to developing the story game elements and smoothing out the connection between the abstract and the concrete mechanics.

So have others felt similarly about 13th Age? Other story-first GMs who made the system work for them?

#tabletop games #rpgs #tabletop roleplaying #13th Age #story games

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sojutrait · 3 years ago

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✧sojutrait’s hot girl guide to utilizing the club feature in ts4✧

~huge shoutout to @its-opheliasgarden for giving me the idea to make this guide like an hour ago and i immediately had to jump on it sdjkd~

i’m sure everyone who has get together is somewhat familiar with the club system and the general basis of how it works but trust me when i tell you it is the most underrated part of ts4. i get a lot of asks about how i pull off certain aspects of my gameplay and 9/10 it’s clubs so here’s a (not so) small guide to help out!

general information about clubs: ik a lot of people don’t even remember the club system exists so here’s a quick refresher in case when reading this you go “wait since when can we do THAT”

you can set clubs to being “invite only” which will restrict randoms from joining your club (i highly recommend you do that for every club no matter what)

you can set club hangouts, either as specific lots or general places like “cafes” or “parks”

you can set club wardrobe for each frame and age so whenever your club meets they will change into that outfit

you can restrict who can join your club for a myriad of things including celebrity level, traits, age, marriage status, career etc. (this comes in handy a lot as i’ll expound on further down)

you are given 6 sims to start off with but with club points u can purchase extra slots for up to 8 sims (tbh just cheat for extra points with mcc)

club points can also purchase skill boosts so your sims gain skills faster when in a club gathering

pt 1 - using clubs to make… well clubs

ts4 is pretty notorious for being desolate in the child/teen activities department. there are little to no after school activities and the ones we do have are a rabbit hole. clubs can really help expand on them or create entirely new ones as i am here to explain to you today

theater club - drama club is an after school activity that came with get famous and is unfortunately a rabbit hole. your child or teen fucks off to the Void for a couple hours and comes back with a couple extra percentages in the acting skill. what i like to with drama clubs is to create one using the club system. that way, you get an actual interactive drama club experience. i set costumes using the “set club wardrobe” feature. i set the activities for the club to practice acting and play instruments. using the club hangout you can set their hangout to a theater of your choosing (self promo of the theater i use and built). helpful skill boosts to purchase with club points - acting, creativity (for child sims), piano, guitar, singing

scouts - like with drama club, seasons came with a half-baked after school activity for children/teens in the form of scouts. what i personally do, is make my own scouts troop for my sim to go to and meet sims. their wardrobe is set to the scouts uniform that we got with seasons, and for their club hangout i just use the general option of any park but if you have a specific one you want to choose feel free to do that. i also restrict sims that can join the club to be only those in the scout career. the game is pretty good at making npcs join scouts on their own but if you find that there are no sims in your save that are, you can hop in random households and make their sims join the scouts career, or just simply omit that as being a requirement to join the club. i set the club activities to frog catching, fishing, etc all that good nature stuff. helpful skill boosts to purchase with club points - fishing, fitness, motor (for child sims)

those suburban mom clubs yk the type - this one’s gonna be short and sweet bc it doesn’t really differ from how the club system was meant to be played. i like to make a club of all the moms in the neighborhood just to do mom things lmao. there’s no club uniform, but i do usually set the club hangout to a cafe or a specific mom’s house and set activities to drinking coffee and socializing with each other. for a mommy and me type club, toddlers are unable to join clubs but once i start a club gathering i simply invite the toddlers over and they will not leave until their parent leaves (which is after the club gathering ends) helpful skill boosts to purchase with club points - parenting

dance team - this ones also short and simple, make a club, give them the dancing activity, set a uniform if u want them to do a recital, club hangout at a dance studio, that’s it here’s my sim ophelia falling on her face

pt 2 - mentors

mentoring isn’t exclusive to get together or the club system but it can be used in tandem. once a sim reaches level 10 in most skills, they gain the opportunity to mentor other sims (there is also a mentor reward trait which can be purchased). mentoring causes the other sim to gain in that skill super fast, with moodlets and sentiments between the sims and what not. now what the fuck does that have to do with clubs u may be asking, a whole lot baby. mentors can be used as leaders in scouts, drama club captains, coaches, even teachers (which i’ll expand upon in the school section). i usually kidnap a random npc or make a sim, give them level 10 in the skills i want them to mentor my sims in, give them the mentor reward trait, then just add them to my club. you don’t even need to control them to get them to mentor, simply start the action then click the sims and choose “ask to mentor”.

pt 3 - sports

“but soju there are no sport teams in ts4” aHA again, that is where u are wrong besties. with no mods or cc, ts4 has 2 sports, basketball (city living) and soccer (university but also the base game as a rabbit hole career under the title of just “athlete”) and swimming ig to some extent

let’s start with basketball. my sim ollie was on a basketball team when she was a child which i achieved using what was already discussed here. i set their uniform (for sports make sure you set it under the athletic category so they switch into the right outfit when playing basketball), gave them the basketball activity, make their hangout a basketball court (self promo plug again) wam bam that’s done, short and sweet. soccer is a tiny bit more complicated. once your sim joins the soccer career, in their relationship panel under the co-workers tab you will see your teammates. that’s who you will put in your club. you can even restrict the members allowed in to only be sims in the soccer career. if you’re really crazy you can make a rival team club but i’m too lazy for that half the time. you could also continue this post-graduation, with your sims co-workers from the athlete career but ngl idrgaf at that point so i dont. activities is set to soccer and working out, hangout set to a soccer field or just a gym so they can workout together as a team. you can also make a swimming team, same way just do all what was said before but set the hangout to a pool, activity to swimming, and if you have a specific uniform you want them to change into, make sure u put it under the swimwear category. helpful skill boosts for sports teams - fitness, logic (which u need for the soccer career), motor (for child sims)

(tiny addendum for legacy players) - you can also use clubs to group together family members cousins, etc. very small thing but i figure it’s worth mentioning

pt 4 - the holy grail: schools

be warned; this one takes a bit more planning and finessing than the others for the obvious reason that we do not have interactive schools in the sims 4. but alas, here i am to explain how i do it using everything that was mentioned already

side note: ik there are mods for interactive schools but tbh i can never really keep track with which are updated so i just do it this janky way

club hangout ~ a school. they’re all over the gallery, set as parks, libraries, generic lots etc. or u can build ur own. i have a high school i built and i am currently working on an elementary school so stay tuned if you’re interested

mentors ~ mentors can be used as teachers. i make one club for teacher sims that i made, each with level 10 in various skills and with the mentor reward trait. i set their club hangout as the school. there, they can mentor children and teens in logic, various instruments, fitness, etc.

the actual classmates ~ i just make a club of any children or teen sims around the save in one club as my sims classmates. i recommend you turn on the age requirement to be child or teen when adding sims, then remove it. in doing this, that ensures neither your sim or their classmates will be kicked out of the club upon aging up

from there it’s all up up to you. you can add any activities you feel are “school like”. i usually do do homework, do school projects, read, use the science experiment table, painting, etc. you can also use those skill boosts i mentioned

you can also assign school uniforms by using that club wardrobe feature

there is the issue of your sim having to go to real school but this doesn’t really bother me. i have them hangout after real school or on the weekends, but if u want it to really replace going to school, u can place down the online schooling computers by kawaiistacie so your sim will actually do school work there and have it affect their grade.

if you feel that 8 sims is not enough, you can make another club in your save with the same settings as your main classmates club and set their hangout as the school as well so they show up. i don’t ever do this tho lmao, 8 sims is enough for me but hey it’s your call

WHEWWW i hope this is comprehensive. i really randomly think of more ways i can use the club system nearly everyday but here’s a good place to start for those who want to expand on their gameplay!

#ignore any typos i typed this on my phone's notes app half awake #nOW good night #tutorial #gameplay advice #s

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bitchfitch · 2 years ago

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like something that has really stood out to me about Scarlet/Violet is that there's so much more focus on making the characters People and not just pokemon NPCs.

Like, in most of these games, the characters are only about pokemon. Their entire life revolves around them in this same sorta generic way. They're all the same flavor in different packaging. Your rival always wants to be better than you or is single minded in their goals to be the pokemon champion for... Reasons? and your friend character is just sorta there. the gym leaders are a skill check that aren't usually worth thinking about beyond going 'ah neat design' with basically no life to them. the Villain bosses are just Bad Guys tm with very little like, exploration or motivation.

You feel like the only human in most of these games. There might be one or two characters who work but most of them are just. Hollow.

But not Scarlet and Violet. Actual work is put into giving the characters Something outside of just being pokemon NPCs. The gyms all convey something about the leaders more than just what type they use, the leaders themselves are more than just 1 note personalities. Your rival has Fire and drive and she actually Works to achieve her goals and it never feels like she's just There to fill Blue's shoes and get beat up on. The friend character has like an actual plot you can work to further, he's not just there to smile passively and offer vague encouragements.

The Villains are kinda cringe in that they feel like they were written as a anti bullying PSA first, but they aren't Generic. They're the sort of kids who Would get picked on to hell and back in highschool, and they don't make a lot of sense but it still Works and you want to see these guys do better and start being able to feel safe and comfortable returning to school after being ostracized.

I think the game Letting the characters care about things outside of Pokemon has been one of the best ideas Gamefreak has had in ages. it makes them all feel so much more Real and it makes me Want to interact with this world and solve the problems it's presenting to me.

I think the game being open world really forced Gamefreak to Actually loop the story in with mechanical advancement. There's not that stop go rhythm where the plot just pauses for an hour while you try to beat a gym to get the Necessary tm. The story moves as you do and adapts to you because Gamefreak can't put a cut scene trigger in the middle of a path and garuntee it actually gets hit at an appropriate time they had to find a way to actually tie the story into you interacting with the gyms and titans and team star bases because those were the only things they could feasibly track.

Like... I haven't enjoyed a Pokemon game since sun/moon, and i played that zooted on pain killers and haven't been able to have fun with it since. I thought I'd just grown out of the series, but this game has actually been Fun.

#i didn't even mention the teachers but fuck man #inlove the teachers so much

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dmsden · 4 years ago

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Make It Mean Something - Making PC deaths meaningful to the other players

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Sometimes the dice are not in a player’s favor. Sometimes three death saves come up awfully fast. Sometimes a death happens, and everyone’s sitting around the table uncertainly, not sure how to react. It is that moment that daddydeputy raised in their Question from a Denizen. They asked if I had any thoughts on “How to make pc deaths more impactful and growthful for the others (and perhaps themselves?)”

DD, it’s a tricky balance to strike. On the one hand, you want the game to have real and dangerous consequences for the actions the characters take. On the other hand, the death of a beloved character can really upset a player or even crash a whole campaign. My players are very mature and accepting of the consequences (although they’ll pull out all the stops to try and stop it from happening to one of their own), but not everyone can be, even if they say they are. Sometimes you don’t know how the death of a character is going to affect you until it happens. I think of myself as a very mature player, but if a character as dear to me as Skittle, my mouse pooka from Changeling the Dreaming, died, I suspect I’d be devastated.

Some campaigns have a very revolving door attitude towards death. Oh, you died? Here’s a revivify spell, or a raise dead spell, or what have you. Other make it harder, possibly keeping those spells out of the hands of the players or requiring skill challenges for raising the dead (a la Critical Role). I suspect DD is wanting to lean more towards the latter, so let’s look at some ways to really make death matter.

Run lower-level campaigns: At low levels, death is a lot more difficult to overcome. By the time you get your fallen friend to a temple, the window for Revivify is long over, and who can afford the diamond for a Raise Dead spell, even assuming you can find a cleric who can cast it for free for you? But most NPC temples I’ve run in my games have been willing to cast Raise Dead for free if the PCs will undertake a quest on behalf of the temple. In a situation like this, the dead PC’s player could potentially play a cleric or paladin of the temple sent along to help, or the temple might cast raise dead in advance and take an oath that they will fulfill the quest. If the temple doesn’t trust them to keep their word, there are always geas spells to make sure of it.

Limit access to spells that return the dead: Maybe not every god grants the ability to raise the dead to their followers. Maybe diamonds are hard to find in your campaign. Whatever the path you take, you can make certain that death isn’t just a revolving door by making the spells difficult to cast. Maybe the deity will only grant the spells to their cleric once the party fulfills a quest or defeats a monster that has been plaguing the faithful. You could change the material component from a diamond to “the deity’s favor.” Casting the spell expends the favor, so now a new service to the deity would be needed before the next chance of casting it.

Make return from death uncertain: One of the things I really like in Critical Role that I intend to adopt in my next campaign (and I even know how I’m going to make the change make sense in my campaign world) is that returning from death via Raise Dead is by no means a certain thing. The Critical Role has a skill challenge like system in which up to three people can contribute to the ritual to return the dead by entreating the dead person to return. If people all want to use the same skill, such as Persuasion, the DC for the second and third people goes up. A PC might be coaxed to return via Performance, Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception...I’d even allow rolls like Arcana for magically coercing the dead spirit to return or Religion to remind a Paladin that their duty to their deity is not yet fulfilled. This had led to some dramatic moments in CR, and I definitely intend to put together my own system for my next campaign.

Make return from death limited: You could very easily put together a system that limited the number of times the same spirit could return from the dead. In older editions of D&D, returning from death required a “System Shock” check, and the body might not survive the attempt to reunite it with its spirit. If you wanted something similar, you could make a system in which one of your attributes represents your ability to return from death, even using Revivify. I would like base it off of your Constitution or Charisma score. You can return from death a number of times equal to 1+your Constitution or Charisma modifier (minimum of 1). That way, characters can die at least once and come back, but it can’t happen dozens of times.

Make the way someone dies directly affect their afterlife: For some players, this will really matter. I once had a ranger who despised dragons in a campaign. He found a dragonslaying sword, made it his business to get the party to face dragons, etc. When he finally died, it was facing two dragons to buy the party time to escape from a canyon where the dragons were in danger of TPKing them. He was killed, but he wounded both dragons quite a bit. The party managed to kill them, and they recovered the body. The ranger’s player absolutely had no intention of coming back from the dead. “How on earth would my character have a cooler death than that?” the player laughed. “That was perfect.” I described how he was received into the afterlife of his culture as a hero, and he was very happy with the end of the story for his ranger. To draw this along further, what if how a PC dies affects their standing in the afterlife? If they die in a super cool way, maybe they get a high place of honor in Valhalla, or whatever you use. A PC who then dies fighting a lich or saving innocents is likely to receive a heroes welcome. This might be preferable to them than going back to life and then possibly getting killed by a trap or a bunch of orcs. This then makes the heroic death more palatable and desirable.

However you decide to make death impactful, I strongly recommend letting story trump rules for dramatic purposes. Technically, a character who has failed three death saving throws is just plain dead, but what fun is that. Instead, consider the possibility of having them be beyond saving instead. Let them be briefly conscious, either to beg the others to find a way to save them (think Spider-Man in Avengers: Infinity War as he gets “dusted”) or to tell them that their death is welcome and to let them go (a la Theoden in Return of the King). I remember a Werewolf game where a beloved PC was dying and telling her beloved pack how much she cared for them. There were many real tears being shed around the table, including by me as the Storyteller. Giving the PC a chance to speak and interact, even though it’s not part of the rules, gave the group a moment that I know I personally will never forget.

The biggest piece of advice I can give is that you must make sure your players are onboard with this. If you want death to be more powerful, impactful, and difficult to return from, DO NOT spring this on your players mid-game. This should be something everyone’s aware of, not something that comes as a surprise. Let everyone know during Session Zero; make sure everyone is okay with it, and, if not, be prepared to either back off from the idea (or else find a different player who’s onboard.) Like the X-card, be prepared to modify this even mid-campaign if someone shows that maybe they’re not as okay with losing Damathran Darkwarden as they thought they were. In the end, it’s just a game. It’s not worth hurting feelings and losing friends over.

I hope that helps, DD. Thanks for the question!

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interact-if · 4 years ago

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Day 5 of A/PI Heritage Month featured authors interview! The lovely Parker, everyone!

Parkerlyn, author of The Nameless

A/PI Heritage Month Featured Author

Legend goes when the world was formed, the mortal races, mortalis, were created with the gift of magic. But as time passed their hubris grew, and the sheevra were created to curb their pride.

When it comes to these chaotic and malevolent beings, the lands are full of cautionary tales. Though some would tell you that the stories are just that. To them, names have no power. There are no mysterious deals to fear, and the figure who seduces you into an alley at midnight is certainly no malicious spirit.

Which luckily for you means easy prey.

Author's Ko-fi | Discord

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE INTERVIEW!)

Q1: First of all, introduce us to your project! What is it about?

The Nameless is a mishmash of fey stories and a... teetering on apocalyptic setting? The world itself is almost completely covered by desert save for four regions and cities that have maintained life around them. The origins of that desert, the Arids, are said to have been from wars thousands of years ago where there was too much magic siphoned from the world, and the cost was desolation.

The reader enters the story as a sheevra (the fey-based race) who's been taught that all this was the mortal race’s doing in their desire for power. And that the sheevra were created to take that energy back from them via deals and names to slowly restore the world's more verdant state.

If you asked the mortalis though, they'd sing a different tune. To them, the sheevra are the remnants of the entity mainly responsible for the state of the Arids, and they're the reason why the world is stuck like it is.

Where does the truth actually fall? Well…

The game itself kicks off when one of the four sheevra clans in the world goes missing, and you're sent to investigate what happened. Though whether or not you really want to find out remains to be seen.

Q2: If it’s not too spoilery, what are you most excited about your project?

I'm definitely buzzing over some of the reveals behind the Arids and other features of the world, and how things are tied together. The puzzle will start getting filled in towards the end of Book 1 and will culminate in the final major choice of the entire story, and I'm really excited to see how people handle it.

I'm also looking forward to exploring more of the backstories of the romances and various characters, and also for more descriptions of magic-tech and how that's integrated into each of the cities (had a BLAST with this in upcoming content). Just in general, excited to continue bringing the world to life!

Q3: What inspired the current project you’re working on?

The Nameless was initially sparked by a D&D NPC, Oisein's predecessor who was far more bitter and not quite the sarcastic chaos gremlin they are today.

Specifically from Kobold Press' Courts of the Shadow Fey, this NPC was supposed to be just a one sentence rumor. But (of course) my players decided to pursue that route more in depth. Said character that I made up on the spot then ended up being a regular that I eventually made into a PC for another campaign. And...things sort of spiraled and transformed from there as I created their backstory and fell in love with the characters who would then become the four romances of the game.

There's also a theme I've been wanting to write about for a long time which might lend itself to spoilers, that I was finally able to find a home for in the world of The Nameless. So it's a dash of old and new ideas!

Q4: Do you pull from your own identity for inspiration? How has that been reflected in your work?

There's some indulgent, more obvious ones like the city of Han, which is directly named after the Han River in Korea and is, well, the City of Rivers. There's also small references to Korean folklore within the sheevra that will probably continue to show up, and you better believe Korean inspired food and clothing will make an appearance haha.

But below the surface level, I think a lot of the mannerisms and backstories of the characters may unconsciously be affected by my identity. Until someone asked me about modern ethnicities for the love interests, I didn't realize how much I had tied my mixed culture into these characters. But I'm happy to have that little piece intertwined in their personalities, their values, and their attitudes, as a small nod to my own Korean-American background.

This will probably become more evident in the settings too. There's a lot of mixed inspirations and sources in the architecture, environment, and culture of each city that I'm looking forward to expanding on.

So yeah, it's kind of funny to see that manifest in my writing, but hopefully it helps to build up an interesting and unique environment for readers to immerse themselves in!

Q5: What’s been your experience so far? With writing, with the if community...

For writing in general, this is by far the largest project I've ever taken on, and there was and is a learning curve when adjusting for interactive fiction. But I've enjoyed the freedom and variation I've been able to build into this story with this medium, and think it continues to take shape in ways I never initially planned but love to see!

For the IF community, it's definitely been positive! I kind of just chucked this story out there not expecting much from it and figured it would be hard for anyone else to get into. Honestly I thought that maybe just a few people would see it, but that it would mostly be self indulgent.

But the support from other writers and readers and the questions I've received has just been amazing, and I’m glad I dived deeper into the IF community. Especially when the self-doubt inevitably creeps in and you have those moments of "oof this is terrible". The positive words and encouragement mean so much, and I don't think I'll ever be able to express how much it helps. I'm also really happy to have found an overall inclusive community, and hope I can extend that space into this game!

Also the stories and games out there? Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectac-

Q6: Do you have any future projects in the works?

None at the moment, my focus is mainly on writing The Nameless and continuing to develop features for the Twine version!

Q7: Finally, what piece of advice would you give to fellow authors?

Don't let yourself get down by comparisons. It's easy to slip into, and I'm definitely guilty of it too! But no one's going to tell your story like you can and the way you want it, so it's up to you to share that with the world!

#if: events #Happy Asian and Pacific Islander month!!#Asian/pacific islander month 2021 #a/pi month #a/pi month 2021 #aapiheritagemonth #aapi month #interactive fiction #authors of color

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