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seyaryminamoto · 8 months ago

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Azula's most overlooked characterization element

Why, hello there.

It is I.

And I'm back on my bullshit.

I didn't WANT to be. But a bunch of factors pulled me back in.

For the record: I'm not here to start any fights or light the fuse of arguments that I most likely won't have time or interest in responding to. What I AM here for... is to prove that there's something out there a bunch of people are delighted to sleep on because acknowledging it would render maaaany simplistic interpretations entirely invalid...

That group of people includes the fandom, of course. And the original show's staff. And the liveaction's staff, to a fault. Surely the TTRPG ones too. And absolutely, the comic book writers.

Hell, I'll even include MYSELF in that group, even though I'm making this post right now.

I found it really curious that I very recently saw this element mentioned in a pretty neat blog I follow, @atla-lore-archive, I absolutely advise anyone who hasn't checked out said archive to do it if you wish to understand a lot of the "extra lore" the fandom had access to, back in the old days when the turbonick ATLA site still existed and used to be the only source of deeper knowledge about the fandom besides the occasional interview that most people didn't even know where to track down.

But the funny thing is that the post I'm talking about proved that even Turbonick forgot about the people this post is about :')

And that would beeeeeeee...

*cue drumroll*

Lo and Li!

What makes Lo and Li an important subject to discuss?

Why, a lot of things. Among them, the fact that almost nobody brings them into the core focus of any analysis made about Azula's character. I've personally mentioned them once or twice I believe, mostly as negatives, there's but ONE positive aspect I've ever found of them: them being non-benders MIGHT be a reason why Azula isn't shown as being quite so obsessive with firebending supremacy as Zuko was supposed to be.

But that's very much the sole good thing I can think to say about them and it's completely subjective, as good as a headcanon, because we don't even KNOW if they influenced Azula in that sense!

Why do they seem to get overlooked quite as much? Why... let's start thinking about it, shall we?

Lo and Li are Azula's firebending teachers. As far as anyone can tell, they're also her advisors. These two people should be an essential part of Azula's life... but ironically, we seldom see them with her. Most times, Azula isn't around these two. Whenever she is? It doesn't usually look like she's having a good time.

And that's no surprise, considering her first scene with those two very much puts forward a dynamic of cold distance between Azula and her mentors: Azula is bending LIGHTNING. We have not heard of other lightningbenders until that point, and once the full show wraps up, there's only THREE (Azula, Ozai, Iroh). Out of those three? Only one is a fourteen-year-old girl. It's very easy to assume Azula's lightning is actually a skill she mastered unusually early in life, perhaps relatively recently, hence the practicing... but she's pulling it off. She's succeeding. She's doing something that genuinely catches a first-time viewer off-guard!

And Lo and Li's entire opinion of what she did is: "Almost perfect. One hair out of place."

This tells you the Fire Nation's idea of "imperfection" is... insane. Strict. Imposing. Unyielding. Unforgiving. Azula's reaction isn't to get angry at Lo and Li for saying what they did: it's to get angry at herself and try again.

But... that's not the only instance where we see Azula getting angry around Lo and Li.

The next few times Azula is around them, she doesn't seem to have much of an emotional reaction (one is when they tell her to find other allies, the other when they herald her as a great hero who returned home from Ba Sing Se). In the second of these scenes, Lo and Li are praising Azula as incredible, beautiful, all sorts of grand things...! And Azula smiles. She smiles at the crowd. She's not smiling at the old ladies who are praising her... she's mostly just happy to know her people are welcoming her as a hero indeed! Most the fandom would go "true! what an ungrateful bitch! She should've been happy that Lo and Li complimented her that way!!" Me? I wouldn't say that at all. Not just because I love Azula to pieces? But because the only information we have of Azula's dynamics with these two... doesn't seem compatible with the idea that what Lo and Li are saying here is for AZULA'S benefit.

Anyone who's had a hypocritical parent/caretaker/teacher must have endured awkward, horrible, unpleasant moments where this adult figure treats you like shit in private but in public holds you as this grand example, and a perfect child, and they never seem to stop saying they're soooo proud of you even though you NEVER felt that what they're saying is true. Maybe the first few times, you're naive enough to believe it. By the tenth time of incongruent messages? You start to realize they're talking you up as a way to make themselves look better. They're trying to show they're doing their job at raising you/training you, be it whatever it may. The praises are not FOR you... they're for a third person to hear and think "Oh, this adult's so cool, saying nice things about this kid they're responsible for! Nice!"

... You're starting to get the picture now, I'm sure.

Lo and Li reappear in the Beach. Azula is notably chill, enjoying the ride, talking casually with Ty Lee, telling Zuko to lighten up and to stop taking Ozai's choices personally, right? She seems... content. Relaxed.

Then, everything changed when Lo and Li attacked.

We don't even see why Azula is making this face at first. But she does it AT ONCE when their ship reaches the dock.

Who is there indeed...?

The stars of our post! :') if it isn't our elderly twin ladies... who brought Azula to a very disappoting beach house. And when Azula sees the house in question, she makes THIS face.

Judge however you may... even Ty Lee is weirded out by the beach house, going by that expression. Zuko and Mai aren't impressed either. But Azula? The look on her face isn't merely disappointment if you ask me... part of it looks a bit like embarrassment too? This isn't at all what she was expecting when she arrived (she has her old beach house for standards, which makes this extra underwhelming, I'm sure). She counts on Lo and Li to provide them with a place to stay, it goes implicit... and then this is what they do. It most likely isn't what she promised the other three in terms of where they'd stay, hence, I'd dare say there's a component of embarrassment here.

Shortly afterwards, we have our well known scene with Azula being utterly unconcerned with Lo and Li's apparent wisdom to the point of yawning over it. This, too, tells you she's just not interested in whatever those two have to say or bring to the table. Then, they show up again at mealtime and I think Azula just ignores them the whole scene.

After this? Lo and Li vanish until the finale. And what do they do in the finale? Why... it's the first time anyone expresses a verbal concern over Azula's wellbeing! Ah! A sign that Lo and Li have SOME affection for Azula! This time, you pesky Azula fans, you CAN'T twist this into a bad thing! For sure!

... Can't we, tho? :')

What IS Azula's reaction to: "We are concerned for your wellbeing"?

"My father asked you to come here and talk to me, didn't he‌? He thinks I can't handle the responsibility of being Fire Lord. But I will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history."

And here, my friends, is when we have finally hit the jackpot.

Lo and Li could have been Azula's Irohs. She could've had TWO of him! Then you'd say: "hey! Ozai is such a dick he let Azula have two elderly wise ladies guiding her but only gave one old wise dude to Zuko! Rude!" and it would be further proof of Ozai's favoritism of Azula, right?

... But actually?

Lo and Li are no such thing. Lo and Li aren't moral compasses for Azula in the least. Lo and Li are not beacons of wisdom that genuinely help her sort her way through life. Worth noting: THEY COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN THAT WAY. They're not. They're not part of mysterious secret societies, they don't help Azula in any objective, significant, tangible way... there's very much nothing to say they EVER fulfilled the role Iroh did for Zuko. What role, then, were they fulfilling instead?

Why... I think we ought to listen to Azula, shouldn't we?

My take: Lo and Li are OZAI'S STAND-INS.

Someone's going to say "hey why would you assume that when Azula said this in the middle of a breakdown?? Surely she was just DELUSIONAL and PARANOID and ashdgkadhsgkjgh...!"

... Let me counter that one with a fun little analysis excercise:

WHY are Lo and Li Azula's firebending teachers and advisors?

The finale very directly tells us these two are not benders. We could've assumed they were! They're not: Azula's teachers are non-benders.

Has a single person out there ever asked themselves WHY this is the case?

How the hell is Azula, prodigy of the blue fire, epic lightning, cruel and powerful and precise and deadly bending... training under two elderly nonbenders?

Bringing this to a real-life example: do you remember what it was like when you were in P.E. classes and your teacher told you to spend 20 minutes jogging, and if you ever stopped you had to do 20 crunches and then get back to the jogging, and every time you stopped he'd tell you the same thing and you'd want that guy to vanish from the face of the planet? I don't know if that was only my experience, but I rather doubt it.

What did kids typically think/say when that happened?

"I wanna see that old fart doing the same shit he's making us do..."

It's a headcanon indeed to say that this is how Azula must have felt over Lo and Li, but it's VERY likely to be the case. But I'd dare say, in Azula's case, it's even worse because, to put it in another way? It's like taking programming lessons from someone who's never learned a programming language. They'll tell you you're getting things wrong without knowing how to help you get them right because they just DON'T KNOW what you're doing, and are outright INCAPABLE of what you're trying to achieve. They can't offer good guidance based on experience because they have ZERO experience on that subject! And yet they want PERFECTION from you! They expect it!

Lo and Li are these teachers for Azula. We only see them in one scene? And yet everything in the rest of the show suggests that they bring nothing important to the table for Azula, be it professionally, be it personally, be it emotionally... not in any aspect of life.

And this, if you ask me, is why the OG show barely ever brings them into scenes. Why the comics flat-out forgot they existed and even featured people like Sozin and Azulon in Azula's beach hallucinations but NOT the two ladies who looked after her and trained her. Why the live-action didn't even FEATURE them.

And us? The fandom? The fic writers?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I READ A FIC THAT HAD LO AND LI INVOLVED IN IT.

I'm not even saying as main characters, I don't even know if that exists, frankly: I mean as minor, or background characters. I have NOT seen those two be used in basically ANY fics I've read. I've scarcely used them in mine! In fact, I PURPOSEFULLY got rid of them early on in Gladiator because I didn't want them to sabotage and get in the way of Azula's progress as a character and I believed they'd do exactly that. They were an obstacle rather than anything useful, so I did away with them and then realized they could still occasionally serve some purpose in certain situations: I even had Azula visit them once and they were actually helpful! Fancy that! But... that's it. That's as far as I could go with them. I can't do MORE with those two because they're not characters one particularly feels compelled to work with.

And from what I've seen? That's the case for everyone.

So, I ask again:

WHY ARE THEY THERE?

WHAT IS THEIR ROLE?

WHAT IS THE POINT OF AZULA HAVING NON-BENDING TEACHERS?

Let's go further and further into logical thinking here, shall we?

Azula is a child. Fourteen years of age at the time she's introduced in the OG show.

Azula has no power over many things around her, particularly, her upbringing. That's in the hands of the adults around her. Her mother, up until she vanished, had some hand in it, then, it all falls to Ozai.

Ozai has been Azula's sole parental figure since Ursa left.

Ozai is the one who would reasonably call the shots regarding Azula's education, as all parents are wont to do... ESPECIALLY when he's a king with absolute power over his children.

... so, Lo and Li? Ozai either gave them the position as Azula's teachers personally, or someone else (Ursa) did, and Ozai either didn't WANT to remove them from the role (cue "Ozai being sentimental over Ursa" theories), or Ozai didn't give a flying fuck about who was training his daughter (cue "Ozai is an abusive dick without a heart or a brain" theories).

Anyone, of course, would likely interject here to say surely Ozai ALSO trained Azula himself because that's what he'd do with his favorite kid, right? See. I don't even disagree with that notion.

BUT IT'S A HEADCANON.

We have zero evidence that Ozai trained her! None! I totally will write that into Azula's backstory in many of my stories, but there's NOTHING in canon to suggest this actually happened and that Ozai was genuinely, actively, frequently involved in her progress as a firebender. Assuming he HAD to be is, still, a headcanon. You can't say that with any more certainty than mine when I say I believe Azula loves spicy foods. Does it seem to be something that would fit with her character? I think so! But if eventually canon goes "AZULA CAN'T STAND SPICY FOODS LOL JOKE'S ON YOU!" I... can't even say a thing about it. People's food tastes aren't reflective of their personalities. They really could do whatever they want in that respect. And that's the case for ANYTHING that isn't part of the show's storytelling or the character backgrounds or any texts we consider canon!

POINT BEING: Ozai, regardless of what you want to headcanon, had Lo and Li as Azula's teachers. HIS FAVORITE CHILD... and her only official instructors are two non-benders. Yang added Kunyo as an old instructor of Azula's when she was young, sure! But Kunyo was sooooo qualified that baby Azula was already kicking his ass. So, for that matter? He doesn't really seem to have been a cornerstone of her firebending development and the only other known teachers for Azula are Lo and Li.

For the last time: Azula's teachers are NON-BENDERS. AS CHOSEN, SANCTIONED, APPROVED AND ACCEPTED BY OZAI.

And with those two remarking on absolutely STUPID stuff like "one hair out of place"? Azula still became the incredible firebender she was.

Cue, now, the irony where Zuko was stuck in the basics 3 years after setting out of the Fire Nation... WITH IROH ACTIVELY SERVING AS HIS MENTOR.

You're not gonna tell me that Lo and Li would EVER be better instructors than Iroh, or are you? Because that makes no sense. Full-stop. Iroh is supposed to be the most profound and complete firebender thorughout the show because he's spiritually enlightened even though I admit I think that's bullshit and he doesn't just teach Zuko how to set things on fire, he actually makes him learn theory and spirituality and his teachings are more profound than just "ONE HAIR OUT OF PLACE".

So.

Banished as he is, disgraced and seen as trash by Ozai, Zuko STILL has a better teacher than Azula does.

... Is this LOGICAL? Is this NORMAL? Does this make SENSE?

If you think Ozai's favoritism of Azula takes the shape of "I'll give you every little thing you ask for, sweetheart, I love you very much, here, have ten million doll houses so you can set them on fire, and all the ponies you ask for and on your next birthday I'll buy you a baby dragon and you'll get your own region of the Fire Nation to govern and a fancy title..."?

Then Lo and Li, unfortunately, are right here to be a HUGE contradiction with your interpretation of Ozai and Azula's relationship.

Azula should have THE BEST teachers. Azula does not. Azula doesn't even LIKE them. Azula is openly shown to dislike them! To be annoyed around them, ANGRY when they're teaching her, she feels they're here to keep tabs on her for her father! In a sense, they're Ozai's SPIES on her! :')

Hence? Ozai's favoritism of Azula MIGHT not be what everyone keeps pretending it is. Maybe Ozai didn't do everything to make Azula get things EASILY... and to be fair? That's not what Zuko said anyway. People interpreted it that way... but that's not REALLY what he says:

"Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. "

Every line in this statement is absolutely questionable and all of it sounds like buuuuullshit to me. This is ZUKO'S perspective. And sorry not sorry, but it's tell-don't-show. People swear by his opinion of Azula and pretend he's absolutely objective about it. He's not.

But "Everything always came easy to her," does not mean "EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS HANDED OVER TO HER ON A SILVER PLATTER." And yet this is what the fandom has constantly interpreted it as.

Azula might just be a prodigy. Maybe she started out ten steps ahead of her brother: this does not mean she needs no guidance, no training, no help. She's seen training herself over perfectionism in her very second scene of Book 2. And the guidance she gets in order to achieve perfection is actually, objectively, stupid.

This is what Ozai chose for her. This is an OBSTACLE for her growth, just as much as Lo and Li were obstacles for me when I was starting with Gladiator! Azula doesn't have it EASY: she just works herself so damn hard that even shit that should HINDER her does NOT do that. And even when her brother objectively has spent THREE YEARS with an advantage in the shape of being trained by one of the VERY BEST firebenders out there? Azula is still beating Zuko at it. With two non-benders as her teachers.

Where am I going with all this?

To the fact that Lo and Li are overlooked in just about every instance of the fandom.

To the fact that nobody includes them, and their influence on Azula, in their analyses of who Azula is.

I've seen a shitstorm rising over the Netflix characterization of Azula: SHE'S TOO ANGRY, they say. Non-stop. She's sooooo hysterical, all the time! She's just pissed perpetually!

Well. I haven't finished the show yet. But the scenes I've seen Azula in so far? They don't fit the fandom's view of Azula because...

... they're not taking Lo and Li into account.

As usual.

:')

Azula's reactions around Lo and Li being frustration, anger, irritation EVEN in scenes like The Beach, where Azula was FINE until she sees them? That shit is storytelling that went over sooooooo many heads, EVEN MINE! When I saw people going on about how canon Azula is... not insecure? Not angry? Has no frustrations and was only ever smirking 24/7? I... didn't feel that was right. I knew it wasn't right. And when I thought about it hard enough? I realized that one reason why this interpretation of Azula is IMMEDIATELY dismissable is because of Lo and Li: those two constantly made Azula angry. Even if that wasn't their intent, it's nonetheless the effect they'd have on her. And Azula didn't like having them around. She CLEARLY didn't appreciate them the way Zuko does Iroh, for instance! And this could be taken as a flaw on Azula's part... if we EVER saw evidence that these two ladies actually love Azula as a grandchild, or so. If we had any evidence that they actually have cared for her in ways nobody else ever did. If maybe the ones Zuko talks about, upon saying "EVERYONE LOVES AZULA" were these two! And maybe he was jealous of them! Maybe he wanted two old ladies to watch his every move and tell him his every flaw!

... Clearly I'm joking about that last thing, but anyway...

There's nothing to tell us Lo and Li were anything but Ozai's assigned watchdogs to keep control and tabs over Azula. That Azula's immediate reaction upon hearing that someone cares about her is "Oh fuck off, my dad sent you here because he doesn't trust me!" is... telling. It's not just paranoia speaking, even if it sure can be read that way! It's actually Azula's perception of those two, which is 100% supported by what we saw of the twins throughout the show, WHENEVER we did see them: their roles in Azula's life are indeed to keep tabs on her, to keep her under control, to pressure her into perfection, AS OZAI'S AGENTS! Seen this way, it MAKES SENSE for Azula to disregard their concern and immediately assume it's FAKE. She isn't even shown to doubt it, never questions that MAYBE they did care about her! She assumes they don't...

... And considering that, as far as I know, the official concept is that they BOTH LEFT when Azula banished one of them only? That they didn't contest her command, staying to look after her even if she only wanted one? I mean, clearly Azula can't tell them apart, so they could've taken turns: one watches over Azula for 12 hours and the other for the next 12 hours, I don't goddamn know! But they didn't do that. They LEFT. And if they left? It means they don't care remotely as much as they say they do. Not to the point where they'd challenge Azula's orders and help her when they KNOW she's not okay.

And all of this further supports my point.

When we see Azula in the liveaction being angry, bitter, irritable at Ozai's choices?

I see a reflection of the same dynamics that the OG too subtly weaved into Azula's relationship with Lo and Li. I see Azula reacting against Ozai's control over her because she feels it's DISTRUST. She feels it means her father STILL needs to be convinced that she's competent, powerful, ready to do his bidding. It isn't a case where Azula's irritation comes from wanting to rebel against her father... it's Azula wanting her father to UNDERSTAND that she's 100% his supporter and will put everything on the line to serve him and the Fire Nation.

And it's very damn easy to read that exact same thing into Azula's dynamics with Lo and Li as it is to see it EXPLICITLY STATED in the liveaction.

My point?

What the liveaction did is not nearly as much of a distant characterization choice as people think it is.

Ozai is Azula's Achilles' Heel. Everything she became, everything she grew up to be, was for his sake. He molded her to become those things and simply didn't give a shit about raising a daughter, he treated her as a weapon, and absolutely pitted his children against each other, just as much as OTHER adults in their lives did. But the impact of Ozai on Azula in the OG is easy to ignore. Why? Because we SELDOM see them interacting. Because we don't get that side of Azula's character fully explored. Because they didn't want to explore Ozai's character either! They were as cheap as they could be with all these aspects and so, only the people who really got into analyzing things on a deeper level would be able to say, without a doubt, that Ozai abused Azula emotionally with all the expectations and demands he put on his own child. Through the golden child-scapegoat dynamic that people have been bringing up non-stop in the past years.

So, proving herself to her father is what Azula wants to do, more than anything. Proving worthy of his favor, of his approval, is the closest thing she can get to feeling loved. Which is depressing as fuck. Azula gets zero affection: it's not even conditional affection, there's NOTHING for her besides approving words if she gets anything right. And this show's work with Azula's character? It was meant to make these things less invisible to all the fans who like to pretend none of it exists. And yes, I've seen them, crawling all over Twitter shitting themselves in fits of rage because how dare that show pretend Azula EVER had a bad time in her perfect flawless life!!

Well, the irony is that the OG gives you a smidge of evidence -- and yet that's enough -- to show that Ozai was doing very similar things to Azula in ATLA, and her reactions to it?

Huh. No smirks for Lo and Li.

No smirks for the symbols of Ozai's control over her life.

It's almost like the confidence, the smirks, the apparent ease with which she handles everything? Is a front that crumbles easily whenever it concerns the ONE PERSON with power over her life.

I don't believe, worth noting, that Azula's power comes from rage. I've seen people say that in fandom in the past and I find it a completely absurd take when Iroh himself spells out that her bending is about control, about precision, and it's Azula's FURY that makes her a sloppy mess in the finale. It's even INTENTIONAL that when she shoots lightning a second time, in her second establishing scene, THAT SAME HAIR FALLS OUT OF PLACE. She's still angry. She didn't get it "right" this time either. She's imperfect and she's trying NOT to be, but she cannot succeed. And upon bending lightning with emotions (rage/frustration)? That hair falls YET AGAIN out of place. Proof that she's not going to achieve the perfection she's being FORCED (indeed, by her father and the people who are here to represent him, Lo and Li) to strive for.

The liveaction had Ozai pushing Azula for a perfection she couldn't attain either. She's perfectly content in her cruelty at Ozai's side, right until she hears the Avatar was found and that Zuko has a shot at taking away the privileges she's been basking in so far. That she WASN'T nervous about this in canon is pretty damn obvious: OZAI SENT HER TO HUNT ZUKO DOWN FOR BEING A FAILURE. We never saw her reaction to learning that the Avatar was out and about. We have noooo idea what was canonically going on with her back then. The first time we see her besides the flashback is Azula receiving a mission that tells her she's STILL #1 and Zuko is no threat to her because Ozai thinks he's a failure. Thus? She had nothing to fear. Here? Ozai is actively using Zuko as bait to pressure Azula further. And if you're so confident in Ozai's good parenting skills as to believe he somehow WOULDN'T do that? Sounds like you don't understand the very basic and simplistic Fire Lord Ozai from ATLA, and that's not something to be proud of. So probably stop screaming your bad takes at the top of your lungs, because being incapable of understanding Ozai in canon is not a badge of pride, just saying...

FINAL POINT...

This post is not written expressly in the defense of the liveaction and its characterization of Azula. To this point, what I've seen of it doesn't feel WRONG or OFF unless you're the kind of person who thinks Azula is only capable of smirking and if she stops doing that she stops existing or something. Only people who cannot understand the depth, nuance, subtleties in Azula's story would ever be claiming that Azula's relationship with Ozai COUDLN'T be like this, or that Azula couldn't possibly be frustrated with her father or his choices when it's soooo clear what Ozai is going for, and why it's working. But in order to read Azula as a character capable of this range of emotion, frustration and ambition, all at once? You have to be able to treat this character, be it in the liveaction or the OG show, as a human being.

And that's what most the people criticizing this specific change are determined not to do. It's what makes them uncomfy. It's what rustles their jimmies.

Yes. I'm saying it in this very demeaning way because I actually find it quite ridiculous to be this insecure over the portrayal of a fictional 14yo in two TV shows. Whether the liveaction sticks the landing or fails catastrophically, I do not know... but I do know that if it's forcing a bunch of people to rethink Azula's character, and making them panic at the idea that she could EVER have human emotions, even if they're AWFUL human emotions?

Then I'm afraid you're only convincing me that, as bad as that show could ever get? It's getting SOMETHING right. I do love to see misinterpretations of Azula getting slammed in the face by the reality that all those beliefs, headcanons and takes in bad faith are actively, categorically untrue: none of which makes Azula a fundamentally good person, worth noting! But it makes it very clear that reading her as a one-dimensional basic villain, which is what the anti-Azula-redemption crowd actively does, is literally only possible if you overlook, ignore and fail to understand her character and her complexities, be it in the liveaction or in the original show.

There. I said my piece.

Another post, regarding the rest of the liveaction, is bound to come later. I'd say stay tuned but it might take me a while to write it at all. So... wait around and maybe you'll see it someday!

#azula #atla #natla #yep :')#I'm doing it #because I know the bad takes are everywhere so #let's see if mine actually gets any visibility this way #can of worms here we goooooooooo #(this is a bad idea I know it is I'm having a leave of my senses)#(but sometimes you just gotta watch the world burn and this has been... a complicated sad day)#also sorry if anyone saw it without the read more oops I thought I'd put it there #so either tumblr ate it or I forgot yikes #but now it's theeeere #sorryyyyyyyy

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rathayibacter · 2 months ago

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Rath's TTRPG Post!

Hey yall, been long enough that I should really write another of these. I'm Rath and I make weird tabletop games! I've got a lot of games already out there, and even more in the oven, so this post exists to help organize them all and give you a jumping-off point if you want to check out my work. Without further ado,

[BXLLET>

BXLLET is a post-apocalyptic cowboy game about the nature of violence. It hands players incredibly lethal characters, then asks those characters to try and find their way in the world. If all you have is a hammer, how do you stop seeking nails?

Every BXLLET character begins with a single bullet on their person, and can always spend a bullet to kill someone. Collecting more bullets unlocks your archetype's unique powers, making you an increasingly imposing threat—and juicy target. However, even as you become bloated with potential violence, you'll find plenty of problems escape easy solutions. Sure, you can always kill, but can you cut out the rot that runs deeper than any individual bandit, warlord, or capitalist? In a world fighting to rebuild itself from disaster, are you a wandering hero, or just a murderous tool of the old age? Can you help build a better future, or are you doomed to haunt its outskirts?

Thanks to two game jams and a whole lot of love, BXLLET also has a ton of additional modules, spilling over with scenarios, archetypes, factions, mechanics, and alternate settings. Here's a big list of them! Check them out, they're fucking incredible.

KATABASIS

KATABASIS is a tactical combat afterlife-crawl, where spirits fight using weapons and armor made of their emotional baggage to try and escape a surreal concrete afterlife. It's all about putting together strange builds to face off against bizarre monsters, all while meeting other stranded spirits and exploring the tangled world you're trapped in. If you delve deep enough, fight hard enough, maybe one day you can find a way to return to life.

KATABASIS is a work in progress, with the full game still a ways off. I'm currently working on the next update, The Highway Down, where players will fight their way across perilous highways tangled through a hanging city. Even so, the game's already packed with characters, equipment, monsters, and maps.

So go! Gather your painful memories, bare your petrified heart, kill the psychopomps and shatter the gates of hell. There might be no escape, but we'd rather die a thousand times more than give up looking.

Disparateum

Disparateum welcomes you to the Named City, a place at the edge of our world and the center of all others. Residents of the Named City wander across the full spectrum of possible worlds, visiting them as one might visit another neighborhood. Like KATABASIS, it's also a work in progress, but already contains pound-for-pound more raw ideas than anything I've ever written. It's a dense, strange, silly, and colorful game, and a gushing love letter to roleplaying in general.

Disparateum is a game for a Knight, a Thief, and a Seer, who explore the Named City in search of adventure and change. Here, shared dreams settle over the city at night; here, our reflections plot revenge from the opposite side of every mirror; here, dragons hold court to debate ownership of stories; here, museum corridors tangle their way through the past and into other histories; here, spiders weave a network of WiFi connections and host dense egg sacs of websites; here, sprawling statue gardens grow beneath our souls. Welcome to the Disparateum. Enjoy your stay.

Unskilled Labor

Unskilled Labor is a game about struggling to get by in the rotting corpse of capitalism. But this time, you have superpowers!

Unfortunately, the superpowers will not let you steal back the time you wasted in dead-end jobs, nor will they let you topple the system and fix everything singlehandedly. But, hey, did you really expect them to? The work to make a better world remains to be done, and maybe now it'll be slightly easier. Manifest a customer service persona to fight your friends' landlord, use perfect timing to escape the cops, coordinate supernaturally disruptive protests of an oil pipeline. Play using resumes as character sheets and calendars as battlemaps. Manage your well-being (as much as you're able), struggle against the tides of Western society, and spit in the face of authority. It's not a glamorous power fantasy, but hopefully it reminds you not to give up the fight.

Charcuterie

Charcuterie is a series of zines, each about 40 pages long, collecting various little experimental games, writings, and doodles. The first two have five ttrpgs each, four being updated versions of games I'd previously released and the fifth being exclusive to the zine. The third is instead a collection of poetry and short stories, though I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a streak of game design through it all anyway.

IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition)

Have you ever wanted a miniatures wargame with thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine unique statblocks? Have you ever wanted to microwave your friend's limited edition metallic blue Batman Funko Pop, but lacked the game mechanical justification to do so? Have you ever wanted to waste an entire paycheck on a terrible idea? IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition) has you covered. With two pages of rules and sixteen hundred pages of Pop!batants, with IP!b2:fK.O.(DE) you'll be making terrible life choices in no time.

Stationkeeping

In Stationkeeping, you've inherited a run-down satellite from your late aunt. Slowly you'll patch it up, add new rooms, and fill it with memories. The game's contained entirely on a small stack of handwritten index cards which you can carry around with you, slowly progressing the game by going out of your way to enjoy the little things in your day-to-day life.

And More!

I've got even more stuff over on itch, and I sneak occasional glimpses at my current projects into the #ttrpgs tag here on tumblr. Keep your eyes peeled!

And of course, I'm always happy to chat. If you're ever curious about something I've made or am making, if you enjoyed something or had thoughts on it, if you just wanna say hi, please reach out! Games are my passion, and I love nothing more than to talk with other passionate people. Until then, I'm signing off!

#ttrpgs #BXLLET #KATABASIS #Disparateum #Unskilled Labor #Charcuterie #IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition)#Stationkeeping

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geekthefreakout · 2 years ago

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Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was great, y'all: A Review

Spoiler Free: This movie was utterly sincere, and that was refreshing as anything. No meta-humor, no self-referential nonsense that would make it feel like it was embarrassed to be what it was. The characters were great and stand-out. The party as a whole struck the perfect balance that made it feel as chaotic as an actual DnD campaign would be. The humor hits pretty much all of the time, with several laugh-out-loud moments and many more little chuckles and smiles.

The story is simple, but feels true to a campaign as well. You have the main quest and the side quests. The rules around magic are fairly well defined. Their are a couple of elements regarding character arcs and story that could have been tweaked or added in that might have made it feel more complete or satisfying, but nothing huge. I found it to be emotionally satisfying, at the very least.

You can tell that there was a lot of love put into this movie. The cast are all having the time of their lives, and it's important (to me) to note that the VFX team never skimp on any character/species detail. The halflings are appropriately proportioned to the world and people around them. The tiefling (though a little tame looking for a tiefling) maintains having a tail in every scene, without them making a big deal about the fact that she has one.

This is a great movie for DnD fans. If you are not familiar with Dungeons and Dragons or TTRPGs in general, however, I still don't feel you will be missing much. It's an adventure fantasy, and a very accessible one at that, with found family and the power of self-respect and love driving its core.

8.5/10 for me.

Spoilers under the cut- and it's LONG, so be ready for that.

SPOILER TIME BABYYYYYY. This will be a breakdown of the movie's plot with my own insights- sometimes I will use DnD terminology as in my head I was imagining each roll of the dice. Scroll down to the end if you just want to see what I would have changed about the movie.

The way we are introduced to our two primary main characters, Edgin and Holga, is very fun. We meet them in a prison as they acquire a burly new cellmate, who they each deal with in ways that make it very clear who and what they are- Edgin being a smooth-talking, rakish Bard with a devil-may-care attitude, and Holga is a blunt yet loyal Barbarian with a love of potatoes who was exiled from her clan for falling in love with an outsider. We quickly segue into their escape from prison at their pardon-hearing, where we get to learn their back story: Edgin was once an honorable man and a Harper (an order who fights against evil while asking for nothing in return) who lost his wife to a Red Wizard attack and decided to cast aside his oath and honor both to become a thief.

He has a daughter who survived that attack, and Holga has helped him to raise her. Refreshingly, there is absolutely zero sexual or romantic tension between Edgin and Holga, who he refers to explicitly as being like a sister to him. They wound up in jail when on a quest to rob a vault which contained a Tablet of Reawakening, which Edgin planned to use to return his wife to life. They were betrayed by the witch Sofina (played with maximum menace by Daisy Head), who captured them in a time stop. Edgin entrusted the tablet and care of his daughter to his friend and party-member, Forge the rogue and con.

They escape on the wings of an unfortunate judge named Jonathan, who is an Aarakorca, despite the fact that Edgin totally passed the charisma check and the panel of judges were actually swayed to approve the pardon. This is when I knew I would love this movie.

Holga and Edgin set out to reunite with Kira (Chloe Coleman, who does great but is noticeably much lighter skinned than the actresses who played her as a baby and toddler), Edgin's daughter. Their daughter, really. They find her with Forge (played with delightful charm and sliminess by Hugh Grant), who has risen to become Lord of Neverwinter. She is angry with Edgin for abandoning her, because it turns out the Forge has been feeding her quite a different story for what the primary objective of that fateful quest was: she thinks they went after a Tablet of Riches. Edwig tries to explain himself, but Kira (who is happy enough to see Holga, at least) won't listen, saying that the bigger problem is that Edwig keeps speaking like it wasn't his fault. Forge, still in league with Sofina, has betrayed them, and secretly sends them to be executed, at which point Holga does that which Barbarians do so well and they escape, now with a new mission: to take down Forge and Sofina and rescue Kira from their clutches.

They set out to build their party, first picking up their friend Simon the Sorcerer (played adorably by Justice Smith), a half-elf whose self-doubt and bumbling ways often inhibit his ability to do more than cantrips reliably. He was also betrayed by Forge, but managed to escape and has been in hiding. He helps lead them to their next party member, a Tiefling Druid named Doric (awesome job, Sophia Lillis), who is also a wildshape. She distrusts humans, who have always let her down, but is loyal to the wood elves who took her in and whose lands have been under attack by Forge. Simon explains that he had once attempted to court her, but she said that his lack of self-esteem just made her sad. Thankfully, this romantic subplot, should it count as that, takes up very little space in the narrative, which is part of why it works so well.

Using Doric's wildshape abilities, they are able to learn that Forge has revived a kind of gladiatorial game intended to bring the city (and the city's riches) together, and that the vault which presumably holds the Tablet of Reawakening is protected by magic that is far too powerful for Simon to counter without the Helm of Disjunction. We also get more glimpses of Sofina's power here- she is able to sense Doric and nearly captures and kills her on a fast-paced chase through the city where Doric changes from fly to mouse to cat to bird to deer in order to escape. Finally, the viewers get to see (though the party doesn't) that Sofina isn't just a witch- she is a Red Wizard and Thayan too, and she plans to turn Neverwinter's people into members of the Red Wizard's undead army.

Simon doesn't think think that taking down Sofina is possible, as he wasn't able to match her magic before and doesn't feel that he's improved. He insists that magic cannot be used to solve every problem, his own magic least of all. Attuning to the Helm alone might take them years, even if they do manage to find it. Edwig insists that Simon is underestimating himself, and advises him not to tell the party of his doubts to keep up morale.

After an amusing diversion to Holga's ex-husband, Marlamin the Halfling (played by Bradley Cooper) and then to a sacred burial ground of her people to discover the fate of the Helm (DnD magic rules are used to great effect here), the party learns that they must seek out a Thayan named Xenk Yendar (played by a hilariously sincere and smoking hot Rege-Jean Page), a renowned Paladin that everyone except a disgruntled Edgin has heard of. Xenk runs a vibe check on Edgin, and apparently detects a Good alignment. He agrees to help them get the Helm, on the condition that Edgin swears to redistribute the wealth in Forge's vault to the people of Neverwinter and that he holds on to the Harper book- a book which Edgin had thrown onto his wife's funeral pyre after he forsook his vows as one. "You may have forsaken your oath, but your oath has not forsaken you." Xenk says to a stubborn Edgin.

We also learn that Xenk escaped the Red Wizard's take over of the Thayan's by the skin of his teeth as a child and lost his parents to it. This flashback helps the viewer (and the party, though they don't quite figure it out until later) what Sofina is planning for Neverwinter- releasing the red blight of death (honestly I cannot remember the real name, but it's an evil red cloud that turns people into red wizard zombies). We see here that the Blight has an area of effect, and that managing to get just outside of it is what saved Xenk from his parents' fate.

While retrieving the Helm, the party runs in with Sofina's cronies. Xenk takes them out in a fantastic display of badassery, but it cannot last long- it takes more power than what Xenk has to kill that which is already dead, and they begin to rise. However, they quickly cease being the primary threat, as their chaos has awoken a dragon. Hilariously, this is not the dragon seen in so much of the promotional material, but rather a very pudgy one, who still manages to wreak quite a bit of destruction with its large body and fire breath. Here we get to see some uses of the Hither-Thither staff, which Holga had believed was a walking stick she'd taken for her ex-husband. It allows Simon to open portals, as long as the destination is within 500 meters and a place that he can see. Edgin's brains are put to good use as well, as the party escapes the dragon with the helm.

At this point, Xenk leaves the party despite many requests for him to stay because he is much more capable than they are, telling them that it is not his quest, but theirs. There is a very funny moment as they watch him walk away, where Edgin notes that he walks in an unnaturally straight line and wonders if he will alter it to go around a rock in his path. He doesn't- he walks straight over the rock. That's paladin symbolism for you. Simon attempts to attune to the Helm while the party takes a break on the beach, but finds he is consistently repelled by a vision of his ancestor, who was a great Wizard and tells Simon that he is not worthy of wielding the helm's power. Edgin urges him to keep trying, but after several attempts where the Helm literally blasts itself off of him, Simon turns on Edgin and rants that he told him from the outset that he couldn't do it and that it wouldn't work, but Edgin refused to listen, and that Edgin is doing what he always does- making plans that don't work and then blaming other people for it. While Holga takes this in stride, Doric and Simon are both very angry. I was afraid for a moment that this would be one of those times where they split the party for Drama, a trope that I *hate*... but I needn't have worried.

Edgin then makes a compelling speech about how they are all failing in some way, and that they have to keep failing, because the moment that they fail and give up is when they really fail. He gives several examples about the rest of the party, and when Simon presses him about his own failures, he calls himself the King of Failures. He's failed as a father, as a husband, as a leader. He reveals that the Red Wizards that killed his wife were only able to find her because of a treasure he took while he was a Harper, not knowing that the treasures had tracking spells on them. It was his fault that his wife was killed in the first place. But Edgin can't give up, he says, because if he does then it will have all been for nothing. He then sits down to think of a new plan. Charisma check passes, because the party rallies behind him.

The party plans to use the Hither-Thither staff to get into the vault, figuring that if they leave a portal open on a piece of treasure, it will go into the vault and they will be able to get in that way. Edgin also suggests that they take the Helm as well and that Simon try again, saying that he actually does believe Simon can do it, because when it's do or die he always comes through. "You're at your strongest when you think you're at your weakest" he tells Simon.

They get into the citadel with a great scene wherein Edgin seems to distract the guards with a song on his lute- an excellent use of your bard and a chance for Chris Pine to show off his vocal charming chops. It turns out to be an illusion cast by Simon, however, who looses hold of it as he gets his foot stuck in a pothole. The way the illusion starts to skip like a broken record and then distort in disturbingly cartoonish ways is done very well by the actors and the VFX team, and certainly got a laugh in the theater.

After running through Plan C (which is the same as Plan A, but plan A has a stink on it) and Plan D (the same as plan B, but plan B has a stink on it), the party almost succeeds, but Sofina and Forge outwit them. Anyone who has ever played DnD or any TTRPG for that matter will be very familiar with how these plans come together, fall apart, and then come together again. The portal doesn't let Doric into the vault, but under the arena, where the treasures are being loaded onto a boat. She is knocked out and captured.

Simon manages to get to the vault and, faced with death should he fail, he puts on the helm and stands up to the vision of his ancestor, saying that he IS worthy of the power and he's sick of being told he is not. The vision turns into one of Simon himself and congratulates him- he has attuned successfully. He uses the Helm to cancel out the magic on the vault and to repel the guards attacking him, only to find that the vault is empty. He and Holga are captured.

Edgin finds Kira and explains to her that Forge has been lying, that he wants her to come away with him. He makes a pretty perfect apology, acknowledging that the Tablet of Reawakening was about getting back his wife rather than Kira's mom, as Kira had never known her. Unfortunately, this apology is wasted, as he is actually talking to a disguised Sofina, who captures him. Forge assures him that Kira is safe and will continue to be, as Forge really does care for her as if she were his own, but that Edgin has to die. Edgin asks that rather than being executed, the party be allowed to participate in the games that will be beginning shortly, to give them a chance. Forge is reluctant, saying that it would be kinder to just kill them now, but Sofina insists on granting that request, presumably so that she can take them into her undead army when she unleashes the blight.

The party enters the maze in the arena where the games are taking place, with Simon and Doric inhibited by magic-suppressing cuffs. They face monsters and other traps, but with each of them playing to their strengths and with Doric managing to lose her cuff, they make it to the center. Edgin finally makes a successful Detect Trap and recognizes that they won't be safe there, and Doric is able to get them out with some clever shape shifting and modest risk taking.

Combining their information, the party realizes both what Sofina is planning and what Forge is planning. Forge doesn't intend to stay in Neverwinter- he plans to let Sofina do her evil thing while he makes off with Kira and the treasure, which is why it was stored at the docks under the arena rather than in the vault. Interestingly enough, Sofina is completely aware of this, but has no interest in stopping him. In fact, she is so annoyed by him that she just wants him to get on his boat and leave. This is a rare example of two villains who have completely different motivations and goals, but whose plans align just enough to have them work together. There is no betrayal between them-- they each act exactly as the other expects them to, and they aren't bothered by it. The only problem is that it leads to there being two climaxes, and one is more rushed than the other.

The party is able to stop Forge at his boat, where he immediately threatens Kira's life if the party doesn't give him his treasure. This speeds Kira along to realizing that he has been the bad guy and to forgiving her father. They overpower Forge and seem to be making a getaway when they notice the signs of Sofina beginning the Blight. Edgin remembers his promise to Xenk, and has Simon use the Hither-Thither spell to send all the treasure on the boat to come spilling out of a hot air balloon, thus redistributing it to the people and sending the citizens of Neverwinter out of the arena to catch the falling treasure, and therefore outside of the Blight's area of effect. Forge regains access to the boat just in time to see all of his loot falling away from it, leaving him in despair.

That's the first climax, and at this point everyone's character arcs are mostly resolved. Simon is more confident, Kira is happy to be with Holga and Edgin again, and Edgin kept his promise. They have thwarted Sofina's plans. But, Sofina's still alive and kicking and we haven't had that boss battle yet, so time for Climax #2!

As Sofina rages, Edgin tells Kira to use a pendant that Holga had stolen for her when she was younger to stay invisible, hidden, and safe during the fight. Sofina rains fire down on the party, but Simon has Taken a Level in Badass and is able to match her for a short time. Doric transforms into an Owlbear to act as the Hulk of the group, and Holga proves herself proficient with several weapons. Edgin, who isn't much of a fighter, does get a few hits in with his lute (love that for him, though). It's a fast-paced fight, with every member of the party contributing, and which thankfully DOESN'T adhere to DnD rules (combat system not good for narrative storytelling). However, Sofina goes down pretty easily. For just a moment, it looks like all is lost as Sofina uses her time-stop, which Simon says he is still unable to counter... except it's all fine. Kira (little rogue in training that she is), manages to slap a magic-suppressing cuff onto Sofina while she's invisible, because as it turns out Simon WAS able to counter the time-stop. Owlbear!Doric then Hulksmashes Sofina to death (I murmured "puny god" to myself in the theater) and the day is saved... except that Holga has been mortally wounded.

If you're like my brother and I, you probably called back when they first confirmed that the Tablet of Reawakening still existed that one of the party was going to die and that they would use the Tablet (one use only) on that party member rather than on Edgin's wife. You might have even called it being Holga, which I did around the time that she mentions having dreamed of being buried in a sacred burial ground with her tribesmen, despite having been exiled. It's very predictable- but that's not always a bad thing.

Edgin and Holga sing a drinking song as she dies, with Kira sobbing and holding her, saying that she needs her. Holga tells them not to mourn, because she's happy to die a hero- that's her character arc, minimal though it has been. Edgin pulls out the tablet and reminds his daughter that they can only use it once- and of course she nods, because to her Holga is the mother she's known. The tablet returns her to life, and everyone is happy and it's very heartwarming.

From there, it's a quick wrap-up. The former Lord of Neverwinter, who was kept in a coma by Sofina, wakes up and grants legal protection to Doric's people and their lands. The party all receive medals. Doric acknowledges that humans are not all bad, and also agrees to let Simon have another shot at courting her now that he's got more confidence. Forge, holding on to the one piece of treasure he hadn't lost, is captured by Xenk, and we end on him trying to convince the same judges at the same prison Edgin and Holga were at in the beginning that all turned out for the best, and he's done a lot of reflection and so should really be pardoned.

He does NOT pass the charisma check. And that's it, really, aside from a funny mid-credits tag.

So, I think I went over most of the things that I loved already. Here is WHAT I WOULD CHANGE:

I think Forge turning on Kira happened very quickly and didn't fully make sense, outside of being a vehicle for getting her to trust her dad again very quickly. I would have preferred for Kira to be more of a character with more agency. To this end, I would have had her use her invisibility pendant (which she has the whole time and says that she often uses to sneak around the castle) earlier. She could have realized that Sofina was a Red Wizard, or overheard some pieces of the puzzle that may not have clarified everything for her, but at least sewn the seeds of doubt. That, or had her flat out not believe that Holga and Edgin would leave her a second time, even if she is still angry at Edgin.

I might also try and consolidate the climaxes a bit more- while I think Forge was a fun villain, thwarting him and Sofina so separately makes the fight with Sofina seem a little extraneous, though the movie's fast pacing helps with this.

Doric is mostly a static character- she's a lot of fun and I enjoy her, but she doesn't really have much of an arc. She has a goal when she joins the party, and at the end of the movie that goal is achieved.

Holga's arc gets less attention than it should- she doesn't really change throughout the movie either. I would have liked to see either someone for her tribe or her ex-husband there at the end when everyone was getting their awards, so that she could have made good on showing them what she was worth. (That said, I thought it was great that there weren't any bad feelings between her and Marlamin, who has moved on from her but genuinely wishes her happiness).

Finally, my brother noted (though I myself didn't really have this problem) that Simon's Badass Level Up at the 11th hour felt disengenous, because it's one thing to say that he has trouble with big magic because of his poor self-esteem, and quite another for him to suddenly be able to match Sofina's might. His spells are not as impressive as hers, but he does hold his own, with the party also serving as distractions to her.

And... that's the review. Hope you liked it.

#dungeons and dragons #dnd movie #honor among thieves #dnd honor among thieves #movie review #dnd movie spoilers #edgin the bard #xenk yendar #simon aumar #edgin darvis #holga kilgore #doric the druid #sofina the red wizard #chris pine #michelle rodriguez #justice smith #sophia lillis

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geistverrse · 3 months ago

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Would you possibly like to talk a bit more about Charlie, Yvonne, and Cristie? I really like your art in general and your art with these characters specifically, and I'm curious about them, so I'd be glad to hear any information you might want to share. If you don't want to share any, that's fine! Have a nice day / evening / night regardless!

(eng is not my first language, I apologise for any mistakes)

aww, thanks so much! id be happy to. that being said, these are OCs for a TTRPG called mage: the ascension. it's notorious for being complicated as fuck in terms of lore and metaplot, so, i implore you to do your own research because i would be writing a summar on 20+ years of lore and 600+ pages of rules. lmao.

charlie indigo is not my oc, but my partner, SpeakerD's. he is a nwo blacksuit agent working for the technocratic union. certified badass with cool shades and a mind computer, he is the outcome of project: INDIGO, a long-running experiment between the NWO and Progenitors to create the perfect psychic. charlie posessed telekinesis, telepathy, all-around Mind Affinity Mage things + a VDAS wonder that connects him to the digital consensus. he and yvonne angel are paramours to eachother.

yvonne angel and cristie prophet are my characters. yvonne angel is a watcher to charlie, assigned to him years ago on a separate shock amalgam. she is his 'overwatch', with a custom trinary computer (wonder) that allows her to hack into any mundane AND magickal technology. her father, leo angel, was within the union as well - her involvement is thanks to nepotism. starting off in the ivory tower, she was dissatisfied with her continuing-education after her dad pulled her from community college and into the Enlightened world. for lack of a better phrase, she proceeded to bitch her way out of the tower and into the clutches of the blacksuits. now on the field, shes fiery, but way out of her depth. not a year within her involvement with the blacksuits, she has infiltrated a traveling circus that ended up being multiple mouths of hell, was forcefully sent back in time to ancient rome with two other mages whom she ended up befriending (she is massively disillusioned with the technocratic unions authoritarian rule - to her, she is meerly a good guy, doing good guy things to save the world. charlie, her paramour, is not this ignorant, and is aware of the corruption of the union... and actively fights against it, to the danger of his sense of self.) and sending back to the modern time. she and charlie have since had many moments together, the each nearly dying and saving the other from death. they've since fallen in love with each other, and are exploring their secret relationship on a mission in Houston, Texas, where the Second Inquisition has threatened to upend the entire Masquerade with the help of a dangerous Nephandus.

cristie prophet was a different story - frontman to the popular (fake) 2000s alt rock band Prophetic, he was a rockstar through and through, starting bar fights, all-around leather donning asshole. he and his band were on tour when a fan, who turned out to be a garou having their first change, turned on the stage and mauled the band where they stood. a pair of blacksuits were in the area surveying, catching the tragedy and covering it up. at their cleanup, cristie miraculously survived, his 9 lives merit kicking in. the technocrats took in the newly Enlightened man who had seen- and remembered- the attack, getting recruited into the world of the technocracy with a bloodlust for werewolves and vampires, the dogs and leeches who ruined his life and his career. he's brash, violent, cocky, but houses a deep tragedy, knowing he will never be able to return to his oldlife as Cristie Prophet. for now and forever, he is Agent Prophet.

#sorry for the wall!#ask #anon #charlie indigo #yvonne angel #cristie prophet

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magicassholesinspace · 1 year ago

Text

Backstory, Acknowledgements, etc.

Before I dig into things for the game itself, some acknowledging my biggest inspiration, and a little storytelling.

The reason Magic Assholes in Space exists at all is because of a TTRPG called Space Kings, and the Pretend Friends podcast, run by Kevin Cole, creator of Space Kings and many other very cool games and maker of many cool podcasts! Space Kings is notable for it's card-based core resolution mechanic, and it's improvisational storytelling. Very influential, to say the least.

Back in 2018, my weekly game nights were a kind of in shambles. Scheduling problems and general burnout had killed several attempts at getting a consistent campaign going. We were both just too tired and switching systems, spending the time reinvesting in a new setting, only for the game to fall apart after a couple sessions was getting badly demoralizing.

So I had this stupid idea that combined my desire to play something with a tone like Space Kings, my ever-present itch to design a TTRPG, and a handful of ideas I'd piled up. Back in 2018, Space Kings wasn't out yet, (it is now! Go check it out!) but I still wanted to use that inspiration and I wanted to turn the act of designing the game into a group activity. Trying to dump a whole-ass setting on the table before the game started was a thing I'd also burned out on and not something I wanted to waste the energy on, so I adopted a more improv and collaborative approach for that, also.

I initially played with the idea of mixing and matching sets of dice, but the allure of Space King's "Faces and Aces" card mechanic just sounded too fun and I started getting this little voice in the back of my head that kept saying, "Why the hell not?" The whole idea might not even last or go for more than a single session, so I thought it was better to just take this chance and try it! At least it would be a chance to scratch that itch.

Why the hell not? would later become a sort of mantra for this whole thing.

I knew I wanted to do something with space as the setting, but with magic as a prominent element. The title "Magic Assholes in Space" came to me almost instantly and I don't think I could ever come up with something better and I really wouldn't want to either. It perfectly captures everything I wanted this game to be. After 2 weeks of lazily jotting down ideas and slapping together a character sheet in google docs, we jumped into our first playtest session and hit the ground running.

The first playtest session had a couple hiccups, but it worked! Some things needed tweaking, but that was fine! The players escaped the belly of a space dragon, fought a cosmic snail knight, assembled a new ship out of two ships, and installed a mythical V8 engine into it so they could escape the dark space between galaxies! It was awesome!

We had several players come and go, but the playtest turned into a year-long campaign that ended up being supremely memorable. Hands down the best experience I've ever had running any TTRPG in my life. Even with there being no rulebook and some big changes being made week to week, running and playing was a breeze in a way that none of my previous campaigns had ever been.

Now, in the intro post, I said I started in 2019 (since edited), and that made no sense for a particular reason. MAiS was actually started in 2018. My memory is just awful. This is mostly important because the first playtest that ran for over a year was put on pause in February 2020, which ended up being about a month before covid lockdowns started. For obvious reasons, things kinda went on indefinite pause. We had talked about returning to our storyline with the same characters and seeing where the story went after the crew decided that they'd fucked up too much in one galaxy and it was about time to go check out another one, but the opportunity just never really came around again.

Since then, development has slowed, but some big strides were made. We did a couple one-shots run by other players. There were the GenCon games in 2021, the short-lived Hypermall game in 2022, and the currently paused online game in 2023. There's talk of starting something new, but we're still in the very, very early pre-game phases on that.

I kept telling myself I'd keep working on it, but my desire to work on the game is seemingly proportional to the amount of time I spend running it. So, one of the things I hoped to accomplish by tumblr'ing stuff about MAiS is that it would both motivate me to do more work, give me excuses to talk with people about it, and allow me to trick my brain into staying in gamedev mode long enough to finish some kind of, at minimum, zine-like share-able version of the ruleset.

And here we are now! Space Kings is out and I can say that my game definitely shares its DNA, but also that it is distinctly divergent in its design philosophy. I hope this post gets some people to check it out, but I also hope people stick around to see what I've got going on with MAiS because I personally believe it's got a lot of cool things going for it.

#magic assholes in space #mais #space kings #pretend friends #kevin cole #supertry studios #ttrpg design

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bellshazes · 2 years ago

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Since Bdubs said he only wants to be an "actor" in this life series as opposed to a "director" as well do you think that will impact how he plays? The director comment made me think of how he likes to craft a story and narrative with his actions in the series, but by not directing this season I'm like stupidly paranoid we wont get any good story. Ofc I know that with it being improv its not like there was much control of narrative to begin with but still. Just curious if you had any thoughts

I expect it to impact how he plays a lot! Whether that leads to different outcomes for him, who knows, but it will absolutely change things.

I'd say improv is defined largely by being in control of the narrative compared to scripted stuff, but that control is collectively owned by the scene participants as it is beijg done. of course recorded and edited improv cede back control of framing to the person doing the editing over their own version of events, going up against everyone else's slices. so we have two axes here: control over action (high degree of agency, collectively owned) and control over framing (degree of agency contingent on footage, individually owned).

bdubs is giving up control over framing in return for what is arguably a higher degree of agency over action than other players - it will at least be qualitatively different. he specifically calls out the external self-imposed pressure to split from the group you're with to keep povs distinct or give space to yourself or another player for the episode and wanting to see what it's like when that's removed; he says he's gonna stay with people the entire time, something no one else can afford to do without significant trade-offs.

most enticingly to me this means he can essentially attach himself to others (and conversely to them, almost has to commit to never being alone which increases risk with boogeymen mechanics) whether they want him to be or not. there will be no compelling metagame reason not to let him, only reasons within the game's own bounds. there is so much potential there for a different playstyle, one that fits bdubs' tendencies extremely well.

bdubs lately has been really pushing his editing/directing capacities, having already very intentionally developed his acting and building skills. but it's experimental and varied rather than stable building up on a foundation like his growing texturing theory. he clearly cares a lot about craft as much as he genuinely enjoys playing the game and it does actually make perfect sense in a time where he's putting out videos for 3 series relatively slowly compared to years prior that he might make an experiment like this. I do not think he's done this without a hypothesis or angle to work, and so I expect him to at least give working the angle his damnedest.

and like... there's never one narrative. imo reconciling mcyt perspectives is sometimes like trying to make every beheading game story fit in the same coherent universe - it's the same story and maybe even contemporaneous but it's not a compatible framework to talk about them in. bdubs point about wanting to work on his "acting" and then self-correcting to "playing a character" is also tbh kind of validating bc the line btwn ccs and the characters they play is not solid. I'm not defined as a while person by the asshole I am playing game of thrones the board game but it's still me in a way a ttrpg character is not, you know? and framing a story out of gameplay is an entirely different third thing, with its own set of implicit demands. I would love to hear more of his reflection during and after this season abt things that he discovers changed for him, even if it was not expressed outwardly.

now I'm just going on abt how interesting I always find bdubs' clear dedication to improving his various crafts and how insane it is that he's so breezy in videos. It makes sense bc he seems to build mountains as a kind of joyful compulsion, but I think his director/editor hat has been chafing lately in a way that doesn't make his videos bad but is like. you can tell, right? it's compounded by how long he was sick etc. and missing the king (+ empires) plot HE helped start but I hope this clarifies or illuminates something for me. and whether or not it does I am excited and optimistic about piecing his whole deal together from povs where he now has free reign like no one else to insinuate himself into folks' business

#mc meta #theres a lot more in here but im embarrassed abt how much i love bdubs and i finished my peach LIT so im. done #but pls keep asking/replying/talking abt rhis i didnt have concrwtw thots until i typed it up #peter answers #bdubs

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coolcattime · 1 year ago

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Hi hi hi!! It’s me with a quick half explanation (definitely not because I wrote a oneshot that I realised might need some explanation that I hadn’t currently written 😅), namely Mianite Blades in the Dark!

For those unfamiliar, Blades in the Dark is a TTRPG based around playing a gang of criminals in the city of Duskvul, a city that you really cannot leave due to the lightning barrier that surrounds and the thousands of ghosts outside the barrier. Basically a game set around heists where you also need to control your heat as getting out of town afterwards isn’t an option. Also the game has no planning with instead you making “plans” through flashbacks in the heists, which isn’t important for the AU it’s just something I really like about playing.

For the AU, I’m only really gonna explain the things important for the oneshot (cause I’ll be honestly this isn’t really a full AU in my head, I just wanted to write Foxxsize):

In the lightning barrier protected city, crime and corruption run rampant. The underworld of the city is held up by three gangs, each barely keeping the piece as they vie for power and treasures.

Sonja. Whisper (An arcane adept and channeler. Focused on ghosts and the supernatural.) Sonja is a freelance Whisper that will deal with ghosts for criminals, typically if a building they want to use has a haunting or if they get themselves possessed. She isn’t technically affiliated with any gangs, more commonly seen with Waglington, a criminal benefactor to those interested in spirits and demons who will often hire her to examine relics and artefacts he acquires (and the occasional attempt of trying to possess her with a demon).

Capsize. Spider (A devious mastermind. Focused on connections and calculation.) A high up member in The Lady’s gang, Capsize has been well acquainted with the underworld of the city for most of her life. She uses connections to keep her family and friends out of trouble, as well as to her advantage within heists. She acknowledges that being a career criminal is dangerous, but still goes on a few large heists a year for The Lady, typically getting a cut of the score more than enough to live on until the next.

Capsize and Sonja have been dating for quite a while, sharing a bond and closeness that few criminals can ever have. However, as the two plan to get engaged, Capsize takes on a heist for The Lady, to steal a set of jewellery known as the Shadow Diamond collection. With enough pay that she could turn down heists for a year and the offer to keep a piece of the jewellery herself, she agrees despite the danger, assuring Sonja she’ll be back with a ring, only for Jordan to be the one who returns instead. He informs Sonja that Capsize died during the heist, leaving Sonja hiding from the world in grief until a summons from Wag a month later comes with a payment she can’t refuse.

#mianite #captain capsize #sonja firefoxx #mianite blades au #i will write about the rest of the characters if people are interested!#but i wanted to make sure i had sonja and capsize explained for my oneshot

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outeremissary · 1 year ago

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18 and 19 for Caina and Balthazar >:3

So this has actually been discussed before in my TTRPG party due to my reputation as "the asshole who keeps making the sad backstories," so I have a small screenshot enclosed at the end.

[prompt]

18. Imagine meeting your oc. What would you want to say to them or do with them?

Leave. I would leave. I would want to leave. With both of these. I don't want to be in this situation. It's dire.

But to not dodge it... I suppose that I would want to give Caina a hug, apologize, and super duper mega pinky promise it totally will get better for realsies. Prommy. It will. It really will. And I know my little guy needs that hug. Really though I feel very bad about this situation and I don't want to face it.

As for Balthazar. Ignoring the Allegations. I really don't even know. I mean, I cooked that guy's brain pretty badly. Uhh. Sorry. But a little less sincere. Awkward pat.

19. How might your oc react to finding out you are the one responsible for their life?

Badly!!! Really badly!!! Like I said, it's dire!!!

If I have to be more specific. Then I have always felt that for Caina this would be a significant breakdown situation. He's always carried a lot of guilt about all his actions, and learning that all the fine clockwork of his life's misery was set for no greater purpose than to entertain, not even truly the product of his own will, would just destroy him. He's lost everything, he's been cast out of the sight of the gods, he's been a wanderer and an outcast, and all for nothing. Any feeble work he's made towards redemption and forgiveness in the eyes of the divine has been for nothing because a capricious being could have snapped their fingers at any time and ended his suffering. I could have returned him home. Everyone could have lived. How do you live with the weight of that? What is there left to believe in or hope for? Anyway I think after the shell shocked horror I get stabbed by a terribly lethal trained killer who's much much stronger and faster than me

For Balthazar there isn't really an in between period. Here they are. The Specific asshole divine entity that wrecked his fucking life. *Calistria voice* And what do we do when someone wrongs us? We get revenge! In this case perhaps with violent fury. It's joever, man. Balthazar is pathetically weak, but I... am even more pathetic. And shorter. And scared of even having my toes stomped by somebody's heels. I think this would be painful and I do not think it would be quick. As it happens though there have been times that I wrote some new Bad Thing into Balthazar's life and then a little bit later it happened to me, so sometimes I think that this is ongoing and he really is putting some kind of curse on me. But I won't give in. Two can play at that game. And thus the cycle continues unbroken.

Anyway. The promised bonus screenshot.

Actually one more thing. Sometimes when I'm adding an especially heinous song to a Balthazar playlist I feel some kind of undisguised malice at my back.

#not pictured: immediately after this when they both posted at the same time that Caina's sister would hate me #perennial winner of the local Least Likely to Survive a re:Creators Situation award #that doodle's real rough but it's too late to make another attempt. it was enough to have put it into the world. I'm sorry.#ask game #ask me emithing #god I guess I have to put the character tags.#caina lilindel #balthazar lucienne

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space-city-traffic · 2 years ago

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Byron: 18, 26, 58, Bellamy: 34, 35, Silas: 17, 29, 52 - no need to answer them all if that's too many of course but I went through your character tags and I am so interested in all three of these

omg omg omg of COURSE I am gonna answer all of these!!! i will put em under a cut tho in case not everybody wants to read all that lol

18: do they see themself as a leader or a follower? honestly, I think Byron wants neither. he’s grumpy and doesn’t really like hierarchies or working with people. that being said, though, he does end up taking on leadership roles at times. he runs his tavern like a tight ship, and he tries to provide a safe haven for anyone who needs it. so there are definitely times where he ends up taking charge as the manager and defender of that little sanctuary.

26: who do they miss? Byron misses his little brother. he failed to save that boy a long time ago, but he still wonders what kind of man he would have grown into.

58: what do they think their role in the party is? what is their role in actuality? in his opinion, Byron is the grumpy voice of reason. he can often be found saying things like “be safe!!!” and “don’t do warlock pacts, kids!!!” and “NO, do NOT vomit acid on my floor to try to summon an old god!!!” and while this is totally true, Byron is also just as unhinged as the rest of the party. this man has never followed his own advice ever. someone stop him.

34. which party member do they go to in a crisis? Bellamy would absolutely go to Lethe, who’s our resident blood hunter. both of them have immense expectations from their families on their shoulders, and only Lethe really knows how bad Bellamy’s situation is. they’re very similar, which means they’re each other’s biggest confidants. and they yell at each other to not be so reckless, because they are both self sacrificing idiots at times. (see: blood hunter.)

35. which party member do they worry for? Bellamy worries about EVERYONE oh my god. I would honestly say he worries most about Cadoras, who’s a disowned teenage wizard whose powerful parents are actively trying to kill him, (and is also the love of Bellamy’s life). but he’s the party’s favorite npc, not technically part of the party, so idk if he counts. Bellamy definitely worries a TON about Lethe, too, (see above). currently, though, i think Relban takes the cake? he is a tiny halfling who did fantasy shrooms and astral projected so hard he came face to face with a kraken that is apparently trying to eat his mind right now??? unclear??? but yeah Relban is currently staying in Bellamy’s room so someone can keep an eye on this poor boy.

17. what do they dream about, when their dreams are their own? currently, Silas doesn’t dream! he bought a magic badger plush that keeps away bad dreams! but normally he just has nightmares about the eldritch horrors he’s seen, as his mind tries to hold itself together with the weight of that unholy experience. fun!!

29. who would they save? who would they be saved by? Silas would save everyone he possibly could. no one would save him. (actually nowadays Thespa might actually come save him—which is a problem bc she’s the one he’s been ordered to spy on and possibly kill—he’s having a crisis about that—it’s fine—)

52. from whom do they seek validation? ohhh boy Silas LIVES for his handler’s validation, it is painful to watch. he knows his handler wouldn’t come save him, because the mission is all that matters, and he has to be okay with that. he has this utterly obsessive devotion to his organization, and his handler represents everything that stands for boiled down into a single person. Silas doesn’t even know his name. but he would die for that man without hesitation. and he doesn’t ask for anything in return. ✨fucked up child soldier paladins, man✨

tysm for these asks, I love talking about my blorbos from my ttrpgs!!!!!!!!!!!

26. who do they miss? Byron misses his little brother. he failed to save that little boy a long time ago, and he still sometimes wonders what kind of man he would’ve turned out to be. he misses his spouse Mer, too, because Mer travels a lot and isn’t always home. he misses the cleric. that almost-romance didn’t end well. yeahhhhh he misses a lot of folks.

#thanks for the ask!!#dnd shenanigans

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omgcpausandstuff · 2 years ago

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hulls by loney dear is my number #19 if you want to do something with that!

This doesn't fit the general vibe of this song, but these lines in particular felt very evocative to me:

And the women, they sing in their low keys They sing how did they get here, I wish they could carry me over the waters But I cannot say anything, this is a secret, You took me out here, you walked on a limb for me

This would be a melancholy story about the main character moving somewhere new, maybe for themselves but probably for someone else, and feeling cut off from their old life and alienated from the people around them due to differences in the culture. It's also about how the main character tries to hide these problems they're having from someone important to them.

You could go pretty grounded in canon with this and do something like "Jack gets traded to Montreal in the middle of the season and the first few weeks are rough on Bitty" or something more fantastical like "Nursey wasn't sure what to expect when he agreed to follow Dex to his posting in the outer rim, but it wasn't this."

Thinking about it in this abstract way has engaged my TTRPG brain so have a Chuubo's quest writeup for this story. None of you have any context for what that means, so think of it as a list of story beats that might happen in a fic with the above premise.

Stranger in a Strange Land

You've come to a strange place. Maybe you're here because you wanted to come, or out of love or duty, or even against your will. This could be an exciting thing, but if you're on this quest it means that this is a melancholy time in your life; you're missing the people you left behind and feel disconnected from the people around you despite any efforts to fit in and make the most of things. You're also likely putting on a brave face for someone, trying to seem like you're fine; this could be your partner, a friend, your family or a coworker.

Major Goals You earn 5xp when you... - ...unexpectedly meet someone familiar from back home. - ...you make plans to return home, but then abandon them. - ...you meet someone important to how this place works. - ...you confess the troubles you've been having to someone important to you.

Quest Flavor Once per chapter you gain one 1xp when you... - ...discover something new about this place you've come to. - ...have a misunderstanding with a local because you're unfamiliar with the culture. - ...someone asks you how you're doing and you lie. - ...you realize that you forgot to bring something with you, or can't get something that you could at home. - ...do the mundane necessities of settling in to a new place. - ...get a letter or message from someone you left behind. - ...share something from home with a local.

#omgcp #alternate universe

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cassandrasimplex · 1 year ago

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So drawing on multiple conversations I've had with multiple people about multiple characters at this point: BG3 confuses people because it's not really trying to be a typical CRPG. It's trying to be a computer simulation of a multiperson TTRPG.

A typical CRPG, in the sense I mean, builds its whole plot around the player. NPCs are, as OP identified even here, "questgivers". They give you, the player, a quest. You go complete it. You come back, say "I did for you the thing you asked me to do for you," and you are usually rewarded for that. The questgivers do not go off and do their own quests. They ask the player to do them. That's the only reason they talk to the player in the first place: to give the player a quest.

This extends to a couple of decades of inclusion of romanceable NPCs whose "romances" are quest lines that are, other than being romance-flavored, indistinguishable from faction rep grinding. The NPC I want to pair my character with has a backstory. I will start dialogues with that NPC until they tell me something actionable. I will go act on it, then return and open another dialogue to get the next quest in the chain, as dictated by the backstory providing both a quest framework and a vague sense of interpersonal dynamic. Eventually, they will love me for it. The "faction" is an NPC and the "rep" is romance, but it's still just quest grinding with skippable flavor text.

BG3 gives you NPCs who want to finish their own story lines, and that throws off CRPG gamers. All the Origin characters' stories are designed to be playable as the player character, not just tasks assigned the player by a questgiver and held together by a few lines of exposition. The non-Origin companions may have shorter arcs -- Halsin's is basically over at the end of Act 2, while you don't even get into Jaheira's until Act 3 -- but the fact that you come into these arcs late or finish them early doesn't change the way they're still primarily driven by the character they belong to -- a character who is, if you're playing Tav or Durge, not you.

Tav/Durge is the POV character for the player, and the de facto (sometimes official) leader of the party, but not in a narrative sense the "main character" in any exclusive way. This fucks with the heads of CRPG gamers brought up on "tell me what you want done so I can go do it for you" gaming.

In some cases, this attitude has been actively punished by the narrative; when it was possible for Tav/Durge to try to enter Halsin's portal, for example, the results of not letting him take the sole lead in his own arc were disastrous! In other cases, it's passively "punished" by further divorcing that NPC from Tav's story; Gale has barely spoken to my first Tav since she decided the second phase of the Thorm fight required two plant-and-taunt tanks, two extremely mobile rogues, and zero potentially self-nuking wizards. He's not unhappy with them; he just... acts like he was sidelined in his own life choices. Which he was, and death choices too. Fair, Gale, fair. (He's still got his own arc in Act 3, but he no longer turns to Tav for advice and comfort. "I do enjoy our conversations," he says, and then lets them choose between telling him to stay behind or leaving the dialogue without another word.)

Larian has gone to quite a bit of effort to present these companions' stories as if they were the individual character components of a multiperson tabletop D&D game, in which members of a party that are working together toward a common group goal also have their own, personal goals to work toward -- goals that other players might choose to contribute to, but which ultimately belong to the players whose characters they were written for. There's no dearth of traditional NPC questgivers in the game, either, randos the party encounters who ask them, "Go there, do this, get back to me." But the companion NPCs, and most particularly the Origin NPCs, are not that and are not intended to be.

In each of the Origin arcs, in Halsin's Shadow Curse arc, in Jaheira's Stone Lord arc, and maybe in others I haven't played through yet, the choice I've found most consistently rewarded by the game has been to step back and let the NPC it belongs to handle it -- often, best accomplished by choosing the "shut up and trust your friend to make their own choices" option. There may be exceptions I haven't had the nerve to test out; I've never risked letting Gale nuke the Sword Coast or watching Lae'zel suffer to death in the $spoiler without trying to persuade her to escape it. I've never not begged Wyll to free himself and let the man who abandoned him and evicted him from his life fend for himself until we have time to go find him. I don't regret intervening with a Persuasion roll here and there. "Say nothing" isn't the only choice the game rewards -- just the one that has overall produced the most reliable pattern of good results. "Stand up for your friend to the asshole shit-talking them" has been a close runner-up.

"Tell your friend to go away and let you handle this in their absence" has not.

I realize that I've strayed pretty far from the original topic of killing or abandoning the characters I'm talking about, but I think it's pretty clear by extension that if you grant that these subplots are intended to be treated as if they belong to a different player's character, rather than a non-player character, it stands to reason that eliminating the character altogether pretty thoroughly eliminates the subplot.

It's only if you take the attitude that every part of the game is there to serve you, the mind controlling the One and Only Main Character, that it seems even vaguely reasonable to expect these arcs to continue without any other connection to Tav/Durge or their immediate concerns.

If you want to play tabletop D&D, but with zero other actual people, so you just sit down and read through the PDF of a readymade module, are you missing out? I mean. Yes‽ You might enjoy what you're doing, but you're still forgoing the entire intended experience.

very funny when bg3 players on reddit go "hey so i made every bad decision the second that it presented itself to me. why am i missing out on content?" like. there needs to be more evil content for sure, massive lack of parity there, but you cannot be serious that youre down 6 companions and complaining that act 3 is empty. without clarifying that youre down 6 companions. thats actually not the default state of the game and you did make quite a few decisions that pretty directly lead to a lack of content. cause you killed the questgivers.

"hey so i staked astarion 2 hours in. am i missing out on anything?" what in the shit made you think you wouldnt be? do you think his quest ends with him telling you hes a vampire spawn? the game is 122 GBs

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