#Just made another dnd character I'll probably never use

[purrassicjet]

The best thing about the 5e companion app is that I can make as many silly characters as I want to without having to pay

[riddlerosehearts]

Okay now EYE must ask you - how are you liking BG3??? How far are you?? Tell me about your Tav!!!! (Please and thank you <3)

hi!! 💖 i only started the game a few days ago and it was an impulse decision i made after having previously told a friend of mine that i definitely wanted to play it but that it'd probably take me a while to get around to it (and, because i thought i wouldn't play anytime soon i hadn't really been trying to avoid spoilers). but, i have the PC version and while it generally runs just fine, my computer is kind of slow and the game is so big that it took hours to download and install. so i kind of went ahead and started to come up with a whole character idea during that time LOL. sorry if my explanations of things get a bit too rambly/disorganized. i'm actually not very far in the game at all yet, i've been spending a ton of time doing stuff in the druids grove and i'm supposed to go find halsin but i haven't even gotten karlach in my party yet! i've recruited all the main companions except for her but i am excited to meet her. gonna put the rest of this under a cut for length.

my only background with DND is that i listened to the first campaign of the adventure zone and i've watched the legends of vox machina show. i also have a friend who's super into her own DND campaign and another friend who's told me a lot about dimension 20, specifically fantasy high--and i've considered trying it out for her but haven't gotten around to it yet! i think she actually told me the same thing about the episode lengths making it easier to get into than critical role, because i had tried critical role and it was just so long that i couldn't stick with it. but, yeah, i've also looked at the forgotten realms wiki a bit but i've never actually played DND. i have played skyrim and final fantasy 14 and some other similar RPGs with customizable blank-slate protagonists, and in those types of games i always have to make OCs to roleplay as--usually i'll think up a basic idea to start with and then flesh the character out as i get into the game. they're never really self-inserts but i do often project onto them a little.

so, in games like these my first character is usually an elf that specializes in elemental/destructive magic. idk why, that's just what i've always liked. in ff14 i started out as a black mage without knowing it was the hardest class to play LMAO. soooo i went into this planning to create a high elf sorcerer, but as i started writing out ideas and thinking about what to do, i ended up creating a half-high elf bard. they're transmasc/nonbinary and in my head they use he/they pronouns, but i picked the nb option in the character creator and that causes npcs to actually use they/them in dialogue which i think is so cool. i love that the character creator is so inclusive in regards to gender.

anyway, i named them elenion, which is something i took from the lord of the rings universe because i'm a huge nerd. in LOTR it's an elvish word that basically means "of the stars". here's a couple screenshots i took when i first started. let's just ignore the fact that this hairstyle clips into elf ears (and also that the face preset is from a mod i downloaded).

i didn't really give him a tragic backstory or even the most interesting story haha--i'm wanting to do something bigger and angstier with another character on a second playthrough when i'm more familiar with the lore and world of the game. and i'll probably also end up changing or expanding on some things about this character later, but for now i just kind of made a normal guy with normal problems. i had this idea that his father, a human who attracted the attention of a beautiful elf woman, was also a bard and was a very successful musician in his youth. so elenion has always shared his father's passion and dreamed of being like him, being able to effortlessly tell incredible tales and inspire crowds of people through song, but no matter how much he studies and practices he never feels good enough. if he seems confident it's usually just because he's gotten really good at faking it. he's also pretty reserved and often avoids having to talk about himself by asking a lot of questions. see, i kind of wanted to specifically find a way to not roleplay the usual sort of loud, flirty, goofy bard, lol. not that i dislike those kinds of characters or anything though!

however, bards are meant to be super charismatic, witty, and persuasive and of course the game strongly encourages that with the dialogue options and skill bonuses you get. so my way of explaining this is to have elenion be a bit like raine from the owl house, in that they may be shy, but they're very firm in their ideals and are no pushover when it comes to protecting themself or their allies. they're clever and have a snarky side to them, and they're genuinely friendly and caring in a way that gives them a sense of quiet charisma. which reminds me that one of the spells i gave them at the start was sleep, and it's made me imagine that when they were a kid they tried calming a crying baby by playing a lullaby on their lute and accidentally ended up casting their first spell.

oh, and, i also wasn't really sure at first where in the world i wanted elenion to come from but i decided on something pretty quickly after getting multiple of those dialogue options suggesting that the protagonist is baldurian! i pictured them growing up in a somewhat small town with their family but moving to baldur's gate as an adult, hoping that if they left the comfort of their home and started to journey out into the world a little they'd eventually find their spark and become the bard they wanted to be. unfortunately they've had little luck so far because even after all this time they can't see that maybe their whole fixation on trying to be just like their father and achieve the exact same kind of success that he had is holding them back. the fact that their father died the year after they moved away hasn't helped either. and now, in the middle of traveling to a historical site that they'd wanted to see in person and use as inspiration for a song, they've been abducted by mindflayers and are struggling with the massive upheaval that this has brought into their relatively mundane life.

so. yeah. my tav for this first playthrough may not be the most unique or exciting character but i like him! i like figuring out what kind of choices he'll make and thinking up new ideas for what he likes and how he sees the world. also, i find it funny how in your reply to my ask you said you thought you'd be into gale but then you fell for astarion--because i thought that i'd be all over the edgy, brooding, snarky vampire man, but it turns out gale is so charming and funny that i'm probably going to romance him first. i'm also pretty intrigued by shadowheart and wyll but i'm so early in the game that i can't even say who i think my overall favorite companion will be because they all seem so interesting!! even karlach despite the fact that i haven't actually met her yet, i've seen a bunch of cool gifsets of her and my brother told me he's been romancing her on his playthrough. i really need to go find her soon.

i'm sure you can tell from everything i wrote here that i am definitely enjoying the game LOL. i can already tell that there's just so many different things to do and see, that i will both need and want to do a lot of different playthroughs and that it's going to be something that sticks with me. nothing wrong with using guides and walkthroughs btw! i do it too because i'm worried about missing too many things and have the world's worst sense of direction even with a minimap. honestly i probably need to look up some guides for certain mechanics that i don't feel like i've really figured out yet. there's a sarcophagus trap in the ruins early in the game that got me SO stuck and got my whole party wiped and then i looked up a video and found out you could turn off the whole trap system by pushing a switch... i felt so stupid askjdfgf.

anyway, i think this got to be way too long of a reply so i will stop here! but if you ever wanna tell me more about your tav or anything definitely feel free to and i hope you're having an awesome day!

[ruvi-muffin]

When did shadowgast have a falling out? Also, how do they remind you of nott and caleb?

Ep 97

And imogen and laudna remind me of caleb and nott

Sorry if i was Unclear in my tag rambles i was being facetious a bit, uhmm... let's see.

1. Well there's the Obvious that laudna/nott are always telling caleb/imogen how capable they are and defending them in social situations.

2. Their dynamics were/are extremely codependent to the point of being unhealthy and isolating from the rest of the group.

3. Laudna and nott both have "adictions" of some sort or another, And insecurity that they project onto the other to satisfy their own ego boost by proxy.

(AND which I/C indulge bc it seemed like a good choice at the time).

4. Laudna and nott both died and came back different (not an uncomon dnd pc hook to be Fair) but Imogen and Caleb think they're charming.

5. Laudna and Nott (also a common dnd pc hook) have an npc from L/N's past come back to cause a rift in the relationship that they may never recover from.

6. Caleb and imogen both being Very plot centric and serious characters, but actually they just want to settle down and be cottagecore gays about it.

7. Also there's the point of contension of when you're two adults who share everything w each other including a bed,,,, Feelings Might Arise. Wether that pans out or not is less relevant. Nott admitted to having feelings for Caleb but having to put those aside bc she's Married. Imogen made out w Laudna on the mouth and now they're dating.

STILL had a very dramatic falling out.

Sooooo... ye.

(Reminder that nott kissed caleb on the mouth as a farewell to who she used to be with him </3 and i'll be damned if i let ppl forget that that happened </3</3</3)

((Also lol remember when Marisha said that she Condidered being the pike corpse lol, we were Very close to having them be the same height And having the same issue of having to lie abt their age, imma just put that out there for posterity bc i think it's funny tjyur)).

U can probably find more similarities but *shrugs* that's mostly it.

[ostermad-blog]

📖, 💡?

Two excellent questions. We'll take 'em in order!

📖 My favorite class or playbook from a game.

It's funny, this question. I'm someone who prefers to run games rather than play in them, so I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about classes/playbooks unless I'm designing a game (my current project has had me doing a lot of reading over different playbooks for inspiration). So I'm going to cheat and give you two answers.

The first answer is the Ghelf from TheOriginalCockatrice's game Troupe. The Gelf is a preening pissant, someone petty and small and full of self-importance with a flair for the dramatic. They are hard and bitter but believe themselves to be loving and sweet. They are in so much agonizing denial that my heart hurts to think about it. I think TheOriginalCockatrice did a phenomenal job expressing the ghelf's wretchedness, their vulnerability, and their allure.

The real answer is the one I am embarrassed about, the one I knew was my answer as soon as I read the question, the one class that has stuck with me since I read it as a middle schooler in the Complete Warrior book for dnd 3.5. I feel like an indie ttrpg poser that my favorite class is one from dnd, but let me talk to you about the Warshaper and maybe you'll see why it has been in my bones since I was 13.

The Warshaper is a prestige class, something that doesn't exist in dnd 5e (thank goodness). Prestige classes had to be built into, you had to multiclass in just the right way, do the right in-game things to qualify, take the right character customization options. And some of them were utter garbage and some of them were incredibly powerful. Like many things in 3.x, there was a kernel of a good idea somewhere in there, but the implementation was horrible.

The Warshaper's most onerous requirement was that you had to be able to change your shape, to transform from one body to another. A wizard's polymorph would do, as would a druid's wildshape. As would being a werecreature, as well. And the central premise of the Warshaper class was: what if you could change your body better? Now, this was dnd, so the implementation was all about combat - you can grow more natural weapons, they do more damage, you can rearrange your organs and muscles to make you immune to critical hits, your limbs can extend up to 10ft away from you. But the idea behind the class was immediately compelling, and as a deeply, deeply closeted trans teenager, as soon as I read this class I knew I wanted to be it, in a powerful and personal way. I also, being a deeply, deeply closeted trans teenager, never attempted to build a character that could take the class. I thought about dnd a lot more than I played it, and I made dozens of characters. And I was never brave enough to make someone who could transcend their body-of-birth and take this class, at least not until many years later, in college, when I played my first female character. Playing her was probably the closest I came to realizing I was trans until my egg actually did crack.

So, yeah, the answer I like to that question is the Ghelf. My real answer is the Warshaper.

💡 A game that inspired my own design or creative practice

Here I have many equally true answers. Honorable mention to dnd 3.5 for being so poorly designed that I had to start designing for it to patch up the gaps and salvage something good from it.

The actual answer, well, one of them, is Kazumi Chin's Rogue 2e, which is a love letter to the OSR and storygame ttrpg genres. Rogue 2e is an elegant game. It uses as few rules and mechanics as possible to communicate worlds of potential. Chin's game really opened my eyes to indie ttrpgs more broadly and proved that the adventuring ttrpg experiences I had grown up on could be built in so many more ways than I had thought possible.

Another answer, and the last I'll give for now, is Alexis Smolensk's D&D. Smolensk is a phenomenal writer and his blog (tao-dnd.blogspot.com) is an invaluable resource to anyone looking to run, play in, or design adventure ttrpgs. He has been building his world and expanding his rules for decades with the care and artistry of an expert craftsman. He showed me what adventure games could be, that the skills involved in running them could be deeper than I had ever imagined. I will spend the rest of my life trying to meet his skill level, and I hope that one day people playing in my setting can have half the fun I had playing in his.

[muzzlemouths]

I noticed you made a new DnD character.

If you tell me about your favorite character build I’ll tell you mine 😁

Oh man I love making builds I probably couldn't pick just one...

The build of my most recent character (Althos "Lucky Snout" Marfras) is a halfling dragonborn, and follows the Luckiest Man Alive trope because I just had to have a character that gets through life on charisma and coincidence alone.

His background/race/class all combine to give him just stupid amounts of luck. Which is great because he has -1 Strength and a tendency of running headfirst into danger.

I haven't gotten a chance to use him in a campaign yet but I'm really really excited to.

If I had to pick a build that's already been used in a campaign, it'd be my favorite d&d character, Nikaia! A paladin Aasimar with a knack for healing and a patience without end (but which is constantly tested by their party members lol)

Their art is done by the wonderful @71eh

Unfortunately they never ran over Lvl 2 because they're kiiiiinda a stick-in-the-mud and the party they were a part of leans more towards silly times and memery so they didn't really fit in. They're still my favorite though <3 I'll find another campaign to put them in one of these days.

ANYWAY. I love making d&d characters lol. What's YOUR favorite? :D

[nirikeehan]

enjoyable things :D

@zenstrike tagged me (a...while ago) to list 5 things i enjoy very much and pass it on!

So I am tagging: @melisusthewee | @blarrghe | @agentkatie | @rowanisawriter | @monocytogenes | @theluckywizard

Gonna agree with Zen and say Food. I fucking love good food, man. I grew up in a family with a history of disordered eating and I think life's just too short to eat food you hate. It's possible to eat food that is nutritious and also tastes good, and I've had to dedicate a good chunk of my adult life to sorting out what that is. I eat pretty good these days and have gotten pretty good at cooking. It's a joy, not a chore. Yummmm.

I will be the most obvious basic bitch here and say Dragon Age: Inquisition. I know a lot of people in fandom spaces love to take critical shots at the thing they're a fan of, but here's my hot take: I literally think this is the best game ever made. Hands down. It has the best writing, the best characters, the best scope in an rpg that is supposed to make you feel like a big damn hero, the most beautiful environments, incredible macro political mechanics with the war table, I could go on. I love this game; it changed my life. Maybe it saved it. It made me feel things I thought I was no longer capable of feeling. In the middle of the bleakest period of my life. I cannot overstate how much I love it.

Speaking of things that got me through a bleak period, my Star Wars TTRPG campaign. I started running it online for some friends in March 2020, thinking maybe we'd kill a few weeks in lockdown with it. Three years later we're about 2/3 of the way through an epic, twisty-turny campaign set after The Last Jedi in the sequel era, and I think we're gonna end up ending the trilogy better than The Rise of Skywalker did. If we do, I'll be sitting on the shoulders of giants: several players in that group were with me in another Star Wars campaign from the 00s that went down as our most epic campaign, when we retold all the major beats of the prequels, but, we thought, in a much more satisfying manner.

My cat. Her name is Sophia. She is simultaneously the smartest and dumbest cat I've ever met. She's ridiculous. She almost never shuts up. She looks like she wanted to be a tuxedo in the womb but really half-assed it. She's tiny but she can probably kill a man. She has never met a structure she hasn't tried to climb. She was found as a kitten on a feral colony and I always joke she's about 5 minutes from returning to her roots. She loves to play and will invent games with you. I love her a lot.

Hiking. Hiking? I used to hate exercise. I kind of still do. But a compelling hiking trail will make me forgive a LOT. I live in area with some really dramatic mountains and the trails have been fantastic. I can pretend I'm traveling in a DND game. Definitely recommend.

[juspeczyk]

btw since this is My HouseTM here's a list of blorbos from my brain. i've been burnt the fuck out on art this year but by god these ocs are still kicking and someday i'll make more art about them. pwease do send me asks or something about them cause i really would love to make stuff for them i just don't have the executive function to decide what rn

fantasy daydreaming child -> fantasy ttrpg adult pipeline. polycule of magical girl superheroes in college + their social circle. main cast is siobhan-therese (goth, english major), talia (jock, journalism and/or sports medicine), drew (alt girl, taking a gap year), and rowan (granola girl, probably majoring in environmental science or something that will save the earth). the main four are a magical girl group who have to balance saving the world with college and 20something social dramas. also features lilah (siobhan-therese and talia's ex who is a total mean girl but still secretly has feelings for them both), wyllow (an even alt-er alt girl who is drew's "apprentice" but nobody really knows what that means), syd (lichrally just sidney from scream, she got adopted by the group because they were like oh she is such a poor little meow meow) and talia's younger sister who i haven't decided on a name for yet.

superhero universe that started as a chemistry project when i was in high school where we had to like, anthropomorphize a certain element in order to learn about the periodic table, so of COURSE i made it gay and comics. includes the above magical girls and another group of supers in college, except these ones are more sciencey. main character is nicki walton (can change her flesh into a superdense metallic substance, kind of like how emma frost can become a diamond) and her co-supers valentina foster-nguyen (half alien, can shoot sparkle rays and stuff), basira baz/the all-seeing girl (psychic/teleporter), silver star (haven't decided on a name yet, he's basically ghost rider but a cowboy instead of a biker), and liz doe (ghost girl who is also a toxic slime girl, can become intangible like kitty pryde, started as a villain but turned good cause she fell in love with nicki). she has a whole rogues gallery but the main villain is adam huxley, nicki's old lab partner who tried to kill her but instead gave her superpowers.

juno and milos. started as a college project in my comics class and has never left. root of my dnd homebrew world. she's a hunter turned knight, he's a cursed prince, they're in love, she kills his dad, it's a whole thing. i am perpetually trying to write a graphic novel about it.

gary stu vamp boy. his name is matthew monroe and he used to be vegan 😔 he got briefly mildly famous for accidentally filming his own attack where he was "mauled by a rabid dog", then "mistakenly" pronounced dead and buried "alive", then managed to crawl out of his own grave. he now works as the night manager of the local video store and has a big fixer-upper house where all the local cryptids crash. his best friend is a butch werewolf.

edmund fredericks. he's definitely not an axe murderer! probably exists as a historical figure in matthew's universe.

colette coupe. caricature of evil french ladies. eviscerated her husband but he managed to slit her throat before fully dying and now they're both ghosts who thrive on drama. somehow they ended up in matthew's house (idk cursed item or something) and they all despise each other.

[rootsofdread]

Hey! 🐿️ anon here again :] Those are neat photos you got of Michael Myers - was his photoshoot part of an event or did you stumble across him in the wild just doing that for fun?

What do you think of the new killer, the Lich?

as far as i know he was just out in the wild doing it for fun! which was just awesome to see. it's really fun seeing cosplayers out and about on normal days :-)

and i LOVE vecna!!! i kept meaning to make a big post w/ my thoughts on the chapter but kept forgetting...anyways, as i understand it he's not really popular among the community right now (i really hope he grows on everyone), and maybe i just love the chapter because i love DND a lot, (i'm actually DMing my own campaign currently!) but man i love him so much. his power is really unique and so are his perks, i love his voice lines ("cursed flame!" when he gets blinded killssss me), and the fact he has a unique mori for survivors holding his hand and his eye is really awesome (his base mori is already super cool). i'm super excited to get to play against him when the chapter goes live!!

his map is REALLY COOL as well (i love the little space room in the dungeon it's sooo pretty, and the portals around the map are such a cool touch) and i adore the survivors he came with! i love that they're original honestly, i was expecting him to come with another greyhawk campaign character but i'm really happy BHVR made their own characters. aestri is my favorite of the two :-) but i love baermar too!! i saw that aestri apparently took him in as a child, and i think that's so cute. crossing my fingers they add a tiefling character as a skin for them 🤞 and i totally love the bardic inspiration perk, i know it'll be sooo hard to get real value out of but i'm totally gonna use it lol (probably only with my brother when we SWF though, it's definitely a SWFing perk and we already came up with matching builds for it lol)

ALSO?? i noticed when i went to answer this you sent me another ask a while ago i never saw! i'm so sorry tumblr didn't notify me of it :-((( i'll answer it here under the cut!! 🫶🫶

my april was great and i had a ton of fun playing quantum break! i haven't gotten all the achievements yet but i will be going back to get all of them 🥺 i also bought alan wake remastered when it was on sale for 10 bucks so i have that in my library too. i played the tutorial a while ago and it was really fun so i'm excited to play more of it!!

and maybe i'll give bloodborne a try one day!! or i might do what you suggested and watch playthroughs :-)) and i actually like no commentary playthroughs of games! idk it's kinda fun for me to settle down and watch someone else silently play a game lol ❤️

[prismbearer]

Wasn't sure how I'd feel about Jaheira tbh but I actually love how they carried her forward so far. Her quests I'm doing now feel like home, it's sweet. She still feels like a friend even to Tav and co. Still haven't seen Minsc but everyone is talking about him now, and I'm curious if we'll see anyone else. I knew Xan was a longshot, but I mean Viconia... would be around so... Lol. I did wish there was more to do at the guild, and maybe more traders, but I also feel that way kinda all over the lower city. Not enough traders or variety in items. I'm loving exploring though so we'll see.

Gale's quests feel messy and bugged to me tbh? I have to do work arounds to trigger conversations etc, but ultimately my real issue is that it just feels kinda messy. "Oh Gale is voracious and power hungry, oh he's been infected essentially by a warped creation of Karsus that has devoured parts of himself he might get back if we play our cards right." And I feel like everything that is a Revelation is just too spelled out without enough build up or exposure. "Oh here's Mystra and she wants to vid call with Wyll..." She wants the crown which is far and above probably the best option I suppose but ultimately like,,, idk his quest-line feels like it's not in-line with the others. I told him to hear her out, go in and make his choices, and then do what he needed to do. I usually prefer to let them make the choices they'd like to if it feels that way. It's interesting to consider that Karsus' weave has replaced a part of him and now it is being allowed to chew on Mystra's weave a little to keep him alive..... if there was more build of that, maybe if they even made it feel more desperate or tragic for us to really pursue a resolution... But it's so messy, and tbh I kinda hate the whole "my omniscient ex" thing. I'm assuming part of his ending is whether he heals his connection to Mystra, but I just want better for him. I wish I loved it but idk maybe I just need to do it with the romance with another character to improve it with more scenes? And I get that Gale has similarities to the others as well, but it just feels like they didn't commit to those same themes. Idk maybe I should have told him to threaten Mystra but it just felt like the right thing to do was to help him get off the hungry power train. Every single companion was like, "Oh boo Mystra but it's better than giving it to Gale" like damn we can't destroy it and the orb somehow? Blah.

Meanwhile Karlach's stuff for me rn feels really weighted... Oh here's a friend ~foreboding~ maybe after we can go to dinner with her. Oh here's my parents graves... What happens to the soul when we die? 😭 I'm scared for her it feels like she's going to get agency through choosing her own death which is just terrible and tragic and I just want to drag her off to some other places full of fire... Maybe we could make some deals with genies in the elemental plane of fire? I have a bunch of other internal iron. Or you know what, I'd actually make the deal with Raphael 100% if it helped Karlach directly. :( I know there's other options and the like in DND so like. Come on even if it's some insane ridiculous secret quest-line where you have to halve your health let me do it omg. I'll take a perma debuff for the team pls Larian...

And then I also let Fe make bad decisions today and teach a child fey necromancy apparently... At least she'll probably never do it again.... I'm shocked I didn't get disapprovals??? Kinda a hard fight tho I was impressed.

[fandomhop]

Okay, so I tried to send an ask 5-ish minutes ago but i don't think it worked? So, let's try again LOL. Firstly, sorry it's been so long since my last ask! Second, I would love to hear about your Grasco D&D campaign!

- 🦈

[Oh 🦈! Good to read from you again! I got worried giving you an infodump directory was the wrong move somehow!]

[Anyways; Grasco!]

[Uh, the first point was that the world was actually called Gryth, but I remember having mentally renamed it to Grasco since I had developed it as the name of the world as a whole, but Gryth was the section it was focused on. It's actually connected to another game I haven't mentioned, But yeah. I meant to say Gryth as the world. But it is part of Gryth, so I'll use the two interchangeably.]

[Second. This is the one game world I mentioned having tried to run, and it may have turned into me talking about the things I learned as a newbie DM. Maybe slightly vent-ish, whoops!]

[Third is the fact that Gryth/Grasco is a bit peak/pinnacle fantasy game. To the West are the Elvan Woods, where a variety of elves feel seperated after their beloved ruler was lost and overtaken by a dark assassin, there's the Dragon Penisula (Turned into the Dragon Lands in a different dimension after being banished in one iteration.) There's a land of Dal'litarr, a mix of jungles and deserts, home to a variety of animal folk, and there's always a bit of land that's considered No Man's Laws Land, that is as peaceful and chaotic as the folks who live there.]

[And sometimes, on a map, you'll find an odd little six sided shape in black. Wonder what it means. (I know what it means, but the game never gets far enough for me to share it)]

[Grasco was actually my first foray into being a DM (along with my attempted 2nd and 3rd, but I'll get to that.) I had joined a dnd group several years ago, and after the person that had started it wasn't the dm yet, and I had mention character ideas, I kinda just. Became the DM? so I decided that I would develop a world and plot within like 2 weeks.]

[So I started with a map:]

[So I'd kinda made a map based on the mental shape of what I thought was a good idea and as I'd gone through it, I'd developed pieces of lore for each region. Like Smallfellow Sanctuary is a floating island where lots of the small folk races live, and there's a good few entrance to underground cities and regions, like in Entor (that lil island with a star on it)]

[The main plot of the game was like this: the players had been captured and woken up in a cells in a cave, and they had to figure out who was the guy behind it, since the boss in charge of that cave was revealed to be someone lower on the chain of command.]

[I had this whole thing planned about how the ruler of a different region/country was so loyal to his own country that he'd been paying for folks to kill strangers from other countries to turn their corpses into the their nerco-arcane soldiers that could keep constant vigilance over their people, but-]

[Then what I'd call the campaign killer hit (even though we had plenty of sessions left): basically, like everyone but 1 of the OG players left or dropped out of the game within a few weeks of each other, and I, as a literal first time DM, did not know how to get the replacement players to care about the intended plot.]

[So when the new players came in, and since it wasn't focused on the mystery I was planning out, it kinda became everyone going on a road trip to get their character backstories resolved. At some point, I kinda got frustrated on some stuff that was done by players but honestly I probably would have curtailed if I had more experience.]

[So then I tried again.]

[I took in two of the players from the 1st game and also my sister, and I had revamped the world of Gryth (Grasco). There was still a lot of ideas that I hadn't been able to use, plus some new ones, like magic schools in certain places. It was about to be about the crossing of universe, bc of a big cool enemy I'd set against them, anddd I goofed up.]

[Two of the things that killed this game was me railroading the players into a death cut scene, and then me NOT railroading them into a specific job. The NPC that'd revived their asses had decided to hire him into one of his businesses (I'd developed him as a patron to the party, but he wasn't the best person to know.) and. Two of the jobs offered were worldbuilding/joke options, one of them being a courier. And they'd taken that one, meaning I had to develop that.]

[The other issue was session scheduling, because one person I did bring into the game was my sister, and while she does like the game too (we've played a few 1-on-1 games), she. Also, two of the players had character swap/possession gimmick that was a little too ambitious of me at the time (one of the players wanted to play 2 bros that got fused together who were a fighter and cleric that swapped depending on the day, and another player had a haunted lute that would occasionally possess them). Honestly, I think I could do that better now, but I was newer then and had not talked details out with the players at the time on how things would work.]

[I should have recordings of those sessions somewhere, though.]

[So. I tried again!]

[This time, because the other group didn't have time, I'd invited a different group (mostly my friends from a different game I was in at the time) and I'd felt like I had to better plan this out. I'd learned about the player characters, considered stories for them, had developed more of the world. I had a solid idea and-]

[I. may have not run a single session in 2 years because I didn't know how to actively start it, and I developed a whole ran campaign. Whoops!]

[At this point, I accidentally psyched myself out of the game, since I both did not approach nor receive a time for us to start playing. In retrospect, it may have not worked anyhow: most of us were already struggling to fit in a session with the one game we were in together.]

[I do want to say, I'm not 100% done with Gryth and Grasco: there's a lot of ideas that, while I didn't get to explore, I still do love, and honestly, I feel like the failed games taught me things: It taught me to help get the players on the same level in consideration for what our goal is (yes I say our, the players may be the ones doing the quests, but I'm the one who has to run them.) It helped teach me that if there's an ambitious idea, we need to talk it out and hash it out together (and also leave the ambition for. NOT the first 5 sessions.) And it ABSOLUTELY has taught me to check in and reinforce session scheduling (I've made a channel for session planning and I've been using Discord's event thing to make sure we all have the date and time in mind.)]

[Grasco is my first world 3 times over, and I'll wait for the day she'll show up in my games again. I already have ideas on how.]

[elftwink]

ok sorry for my tone i want to try to say something nicer: if you play 5e and you kinda wanna branch out but are scared about the hypothetical intensity and time sink, it is important to me you know that dungeons and dragons is a massive outlier in that it has more rules than almost any other game you will ever pick up (and no other game with rules like dnd markets itself as 'rules lite' or 'new player friendly' the way dnd does. most games with a total rule volume similar to dnd are written for people who love rules*. if that's not you, you just don't have to play these games!), and also has a significantly more baggage than any other game in terms of how players assume its "supposed" to run.

EVERY other game I have ever played, including ones with rulebooks in the multiple hundred pages**, has been easier to get into than dnd. if you are worried about playing another game because you don't have the time/energy/etc for "another dnd", good news! dnd is the only game that is dnd. the idea that dnd similar to all or most other games, let alone REPRESENTATIVE of ttrpgs in general, is one that wotc profits from and therefore never has any reason to dispute. you do not make money from dnd sourcebook sales though [probably], and so it is in your best interest to not uphold dnd as a standard against which all games are compared.

try a solo game if you can't find a group. try a single session game and bring it to a board game night. try a new genre, even one that CAN, technically, be played in dnd, and get a sense for how the different rules impact the tone, the pacing, the character building. at best, you will find a new system you love. at worst, you will become a better dnd player, since many of the most important ttrpg skills are ones not governed by rules.

*not meant to be derisive. ik rules lawyering as a concept has made it ttrpg taboo to even say you think the rules are just alright, but there is a lot of fun to be had in discussing the in and outs of rules applications using very complex interacting systems of rules. this fun could be had in dnd too if the game culture didn't treat you like a spoilsport killjoy for reminding the DM about a creatures legendary actions (even if the combat is actually boring as fuck without them because action economy is unbalanced). i won't apologize for rules lawyering in fact i'll see you in court

**many rulebooks with hundreds of pages don't have very many rules and it's things like formatting, art, and examples that take up space. just saying this because sometimes i used to download a pdf and then Get Scared, only to find when i actually read it that it wasn't even long. something to watch out for!

and my final note is that if you play 5e and you don't want to branch out but your DM is repeatedly asking if you and your party would be willing to try xyz other system(s) or otherwise constantly asking for some change in play, you had best figure out what is grating them about the way your table plays dnd or you will find yourself without a DM very fast.

used to be very confused by 5e players declaring that other systems were just too hard to learn and that's why they would rather beat the dnd system into the shape they want over choosing a system that already is in this shape. i would be like...harder to learn than fucking dungeons and dragons, a system with multiple 300 page rulebooks? but then i figured out they actually don't know how to play dnd and have never even opened those books and everything started making sense

[calamitouscynic]

hm

[xyloophones]

Hey Cher, seen you posting abt dimension 20 a bit, and yeah I could Google it but it looks very cool and I'd rather hear it from you if it's that cool 💜

helloooo my beloved pal <333 yes yes lemme talk about dimension 20 !!

dimension 20 is an actual play dnd show (theres also an audio only version if you prefer podcasts !) !! there are several campaigns, some with wildly different settings & different players, most of them DM'd by brennan lee mulligan who is an INCREDIBLE storyteller. d20 has a diverse cast & really memorable characters and i've kind of passively watched for a while but i recently finished watching one of their campaigns and Fell In Love

i'm just gonna list the campaigns ive seen so far in order of my favorites:

fantasy high. 6 teens go to a high school that like. specializes in adventuring parties, found family and shenanigans ensue. everyone is gay and neurodivergent. i'm very attached to the characters and their dynamics with each other AND the npcs <33 season one is on youtube for free, however season 2 is my favorite bc it contains probably my fav dnd npc to ever exist (i am an ayda aguefort stan until i DIE). i'm making my way through The Seven right now, which is a spin-off of another adventuring party that are friends with the original 6 in seasons 1 & 2.

a starstruck odyssey. fun campy space romp feat. more found family. this one is has the same players and dm as fantasy high! it has a sci-fi spacey setting and the party is the crew of a spaceship that looks like a giant hotdog. the fights in this one are absolutely wild.

the unsleeping city. an urban magic setting in new york city! another one with the main player cast and dm and once again the party dynamics and character relationships are just !!! so good !!! you will cry over a rat man !!!!! i think these two seasons definitely made me the most emotional. i aspire to get to this level of world building in my own writing.

a court of fey & flowers. ok this one is still ongoing but !!!!!! the only reason it's not number one on this list is because it's not done yet but hsajkf holy shit it's so good?? it's dm'd by aabria iyengar and it's basically using dnd in a regency fey setting to play around with high society gossip and court expectations and AAAAA i have never been so invested in wanting someone to roll well when sending shady letters to other members in the court. it's so good.

there are a ton more campaigns + one shots but i'm still making my way through them! unfortunately, most of it is only available with a dropout subscription so i'd recommend watching the first season of fantasy high on youtube to see if you like it before diving in!

if anyone else has any questions about dimension 20 feel free to send me an ask!! i could probably talk for hours about my favorite characters and details but i'll leave it here <33

real quick edit: if anyone needs trigger/content warnings for things please send me an ask !! every episode has content warnings in the description, but some campaigns in general have darker themes so let me know if you need warnings !)

[nar-nia]

I WANNA KNOW THEM ALL TOOOOOO

~M 🐝

all of them 🤩 let's go!

i answered some of them here already, so i'm just gonna do the rest now!

1. What song(s) would you play at your wedding?

ahh, i don't know actually. maybe merry go round from howls moving castle, or something from the professor layton soundtrack.

2. What is you favourite baked good?

blondies!! they're like brownies, just... blond. and so good 😩

4. Where in the world would you impulsively move to if you could?

if we ignore real life and language barriers definitely south korea or thailand! but since living there is nothing like in dramas i'd probably stay in europe. maybe italy or the netherlands? or i'll open a little bakery in ireland...

5. Where in the world do you want to travel to the most?

south korea, japan, thailand, hawaii... the list is long!

7. Do you sleep with a stuffed toys? If so what do they look like and what is/are their name(s)?

i have so many, they need to shelves on my bookshelf. most of them are from my childhood so i don't have them with me in my bed because they're fragile 😕 in my bed i currently have a dinosaur named totoro, he was a birthday gift from my old roommates! i have another dinosaur, he's called hugo, and a reindeer that i called hee 🤭 and not to forget my enormous teddy bear (a djungelskog!) called björn

8. Do you have a skincare routine? If so what is it? Does it work? pls i need to find one that works ;-;

kinda, but i don't really stick to it. wash my face, use toner and essence and during the daytime sunscreen or during the nighttime a faceoil!

9. What is you favourite colour and why?

the color of green apples 🤩 i love green apples and the color puts me in a really good mood

10. Do you have an underrated song/artist you think more people should listen too?

not really... i either listen to kpop or musical songs, so every other songs i know are from the radio and not really underrated!

12. What Minecraft mob do you relate to the most?

i have no idea about minecraft 😕

13. What is an obscure au that you have never/hardly seen before but would love to read?

please i'm dumb, how am i supposed to answer this 😭😭

14. What is a word you hate?

not sure if there is a word that i hate

15. What is a word you love? Why?

verschlimmbessern. it's when you try to make something better, but you actually just make it worse.

16. Do you play DND? Tell me about you favourite/most recent character! (Also show art/picrew if you want)

i do not, but i loved your character and the drawing looked so good!

17. Show me your favourite Picrew of yourself!

this one!

18. Is Canada real?

only in winter

19. What emoji represents you best?

i should probably ask you that! maybe this one: 🥰

20. What fandom were you invested in before your current one?

criminal minds and star wars! i even did tiktoks for those two 😶

21. Give me a book recommendation!

since the show is coming out soon: heartstopper!! or the lunar chronicles.

22. Give me a film recommendation!

my all time favorite is lord of the thieves 🤩

23. Give me a series recommendation!

aaah... bbc merlin, extraordinary you, wandavision!

24. Do you like musicals? What's your favourite? (Bonus: If you do musical theatre, what's in your repertoire?)

i am OBSESSED with musicals! my one true love ever since i was a child 🤩

i love so many, but my top three are probably elisabeth (an austrian musical about the empress elisabeth from austria. my very first musical), rebecca and anastasia! and the death note musical deserves an honorable mention 🤧

25. What are you studying? And/or what's your job?

how do i even say that in english 😩 i'm studying science of books and nordic philology... yeah. science of books is basically the whole history of reading and book publishing & distributing. nordic philology is all about scandinavic languages, history, culture and literature.

26. Did you ever have that phase, when you were younger, where you pretended to make/made YouTube videos? If so what kind?

oh yes. sims let's plays, makeup tutorials, book hauls... i still pretend to do shopping hauls from time to time

26. What's the highest petrol price in your area :,D

i have no idea, but right now it's definitely over 2,50€

27. Tell me about your pets!

say hi to maunzi!! she's probably around 7 years old now. she was a stray cat and got found by a friend of my aunt. they wanted to keep her at first, but maunzi didn't get along with their other cats. so our aunt talked to us because our first cat sadly died a couple months earlier and we decided to take her in! i love her so much 😭😭

28. What is the most impulse purchase you have made?

tickets for the kpop flex 🤭 other than that all some of my books

29. Random fact about you! GO! (can be fun or not, anythingg~)

aaaah i don't know 😭😭 i love making lists but somehow never manage to stick to them

30. What's your favourite Pinterest board you have created? If you don't use Pinterest, first off WHY?! and second give me your favourite playlist you've created?

probably one with different hair styles and hair colors.. it's simply called "hairdresser" because i use it as inspiration whenever i visit my hairdresser 💀

[afoxysunny]

Robbie as Bullock

This post will probably differ from the others in structure and be a lot longer for one big reason

When choosing Miraculous for the Lazytown characters i really wanted to only use ones that we've already seen in use in Miraculous Ladybug and know how they work from there.

For Robbie i broke that rule. I don't really remember what first made me consider it but it probably had to do with the fact that i think the Ox Miraculous, just aesthetically, would fit Robbie perfectly!

So for this one i had to start from scratch completely, no reference for a canon hero design, no idea what power or weapon he'd get, no clue what the phrase to transform could be.

Of cause i used the most references for him but here are the ten i found most important

Obviously i don't expect any of my speculations to become even remotely canon once we find out what Stompp, the Ox Miraculous, actually does but i hope it at least makes sense for now.

I like how I've drawn all the others standing head on to face the camera and Robbie just leans there. That's because you have to think he doesn't care, the little Tsundere

Concept Overview:

In the Miraculous Ladybug episode we meet all the Kwamis, including Stompp, he is the most actively concerned about Nooroo so now that the Butterfly Kwami is back I'm sure Stompp would want to stay around him. With Sportacus partnering with Nooroo, teaming up Robbie and Stompp made the most sense to them.

Design Notes Incoherent Thoughts I had to justify what I'm Drawing:

Purple and Blue - it amused me no end that with the choices i made blue Sportacus got a purple Kwami and purple Robbie got a blue kwami. I did kinda dislike at first how little blue the costume has in comparison to purple but i decided i don't have to make a decision because apparently the canon show can't make up its mind about Stompp's colour either. The blue and purple can always be swapped if i decide i don't like it

Harness - Ox' are hard working animals, mostly used to pull heavy objects. For that purpose they get strapped into a harness. Obviously i had to include that in this design, the chain hanging from the collar around his neck has a similar purpose (it only occured to me way too late how kinky it looks please ignore that)

Cape? No cape? - because of the imbalance in colours i briefly considered giving him a cape like a Matador would have but only for a second or so. I wanted to keep Robbie's iconic body shape untouched by a bunky cape, also the few times he wore a cape in the show he really struggled with it and also i think it would've clashed with the tail

Tail - speaking of which, an ox' tail has that frizzy end to it but i really liked the chain as his tail so to emulate the thicker part at the end i hung a padlock there. And that really worked. Not only bc that's just how bulls and ox are kept in check with their strength but also because the oblong shape of a combination lock makes for a fitting shape and can be used in universe. You see, Robbie is not that good with just saying what he wants or expressing how he feels. This four letter combination lock is magic and kinda betrays and helps him at the same time. It spells out any given four letter word that fits his mood best at any given moment

Miraculous Nosering - if a Lazytown character would unironically get a nosering, it'd be Robbie. I'm sorry, i don't take criticism on that

Horns - he needed horns. He just did. Look how good he looks with horns! But for real, in Miraculous Ladybug Chat Noir gets actual cat ears so he can get actual horns, also like Chat he the white parts of his eyes turn yellow like Stompp's while keeping his signature grey iris

Hair - ox' are mostly shown with like bangs covering their eyes so i couldn't resist ruffling his usually so perfectly done hair up to make it fall a little like that

Weapon - my first thought of "Miraculous takes cliché traits for animals to base their powers on so i guess bullfighting is the way to go here" made me really sad. This "Sport" is so disgusting i wanted to cry and puke while reading about it. I'll spare you the details but in addition to the Matador in the arena there's other guys too to weaken the bull before the Matador kills it, one of them throws knives. Miraculous Ladybug likes combining weapons with toys so I'm giving him darts. They are fastened to the front of his harness and i think how they can be used is along the lines of, once he zhrows them with his super strength and they pin into something they can only be removed when he allows that, also like the ladybug's jojo they can fly how long and whatever direction he wants, and probably also is able to just manifest them back to himself if ever one gets lost

Miraculous Power - again, just pure speculation here, but the powers we so far know of are all loosely based on an exaggerated cartoon trope of each animal so for the ox that is hard working and persistent and for the bull that'd be aggression and tunnel vision. While typing this i get the urge to add blinders to his mask but i digress. So i made up an exaggerated power that'd fit both but when i told my test group (two people) one said "oh, kinda like Bloodhound from Apex Legends" and the ozher said "so like hunter's mark from DnD" i play neither so i don't know but maybe you do do that's the short version of the explanation xD his power is based on the cartoonish depiction of a bull seeing something that bothers him and then charging at it for as long as he can until he gets it. Once Robbie focuses on an enemy or someone running away or someone he is following for whatever reason he can use his power to keep track of them. No matter how far away they go or where they try to hide. It sounds OP as shit but think of the Snake and Bunny who can both time travel and then say that again. The catch is he needs to use it while that person is still in clear sight for him so i think it balances a little better

Name:

Do you know the difference between a Bull and an Ox? Well, let me mansplain it to you anyway

The reason i kept switching between drawing inspiration from bulls and ox' is because it's the same animal. Those are both names for an adult male cow. The only difference being that an ox is castrated and a bull is not. Stompp is the Ox Miraculous so tough nuts Robbie, literally. But making babies isn't really on his to do list anyway with Sportacus as his partner so who cares.

Anyway, I had the design done and like always i struggled a lot with naming it

But then i learned a Bullock is not only a cool word that seems to be a mix of bull and lock like his design is but it also is the official name of a male cow too young to be castrated yet! Isn't that just perfect? I think it is

Also I'll include in this section the phrases one needs to speak to have Stompp transform them into this Ox themed Superhero and for the power to activate. If you think of something more fitting for either please let me know!

Transformation:

simple version - horns up / horns down

More detailed - time to charge / time to loaf

(charging is when a bull starts running blindly at something; loafing is the professional farmer term for a resting cow)

Power: Target Charge, Locked On, or my personal favorite option Head-On. Again going with the more in depth terminology, that's what the running style of a bull is called when he's chatging at a target

Story:

Robbie lived in Lazytown but when the kids grew louder and older and he got more annoyed wih not having his peace and quiet he just up and left. He spent a lot of time traveling around, living wherever it was comfortable and leaving when it wasn't anymore. Thanks to being an inventor and overall talanted crafty person he got by pretty easily as there was always a company running on "hire a lazy person for an important job, they'll find the easiest solution for the most complicated problems" so he never really had to worry.

Whether by coincidence or fate Robbie and Sportacus run into each other and despite Robbie being a little difficult they both immediately feel strangely drawn to one another. With time going by they meet more often, at first more or less by chance but eventually they plan to meet up regularly. They might have very different ways of doing it but they share a common lifestyle: helping out others to live a comfortable and fulfilling life.

Only after Sportacus was chosen to be the new Guardian of the Miracle Box he finally asks Robbie to join him, full time by his side traveling in his airship around the world wherever they may be needed. Of cause only for moral support and such, obviously. You see, they always enjoyed each others company and sort of over time eased into a relationship like coexistence but neither of them ever really acknowledged that. Only when Sportacus got Nooroo's power to sense other people's feelings that barrier of miscommunication fully fell. Robbie is incredibly bad with conveying his emotions but now Sportacus can sense that he has potentially the most powerful and purest emotions he ever encountered. Not only is each feeling of his powerful but when there is more than one at play they don't mix together and muddy each other but instead boost even more. He knew before that he wanted Robbie to join him but that discovery made it a necessity.

Despite not being able to actually say so Robbie is thrilled to come along. Only over time and with a lot of painfully slow conversations they manage to agree to make their relationship official.

Stompp, the sassy Ox Kwami, regularly bursts out of the Miracle Box to want to check on Nooroo and slowly he and Robbie bond over telling Sportacus and Nooroo to go easier on themselves and let a little responsibility get taken off their shoulders so eventually they team up and Bullock is created.

Thanks to Robbie's hard work to better himself with Sportacus' help, Stompp's magic transformation provides him with a tail that conveys his feelings for him.

When they hear that Lazytown has been wiped clean of grown-ups Sportacus immediately flies them over there so Robbie can check on his hometown. Finding only a few children, now teens, left there Robbie recognizes them and the two form the plan to give them Miraculous' too so they can help to find their lost family, friends and neighbors and fight together to bring them back.

Wow that was so much to read and you did it! I'm so impressed and thankful! You deserve a pat on the back (if you want one) and a cookie and/or sportscandy on your way out

[nirikeehan]

Emoji asks! 😅, 🤡 and ❌

Heee thanks for the ask. Full question list here!

😅 What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists?

It's definitely Tactical Maneuvers. It's a deliberately silly smut fic between Thalia and Cullen. I wrote it giggling the entire time and assumed no one would read it because it's very cheesy.

It's now my second most popular fic ever. If I'd known that would happen, I might've taken it a little more seriously.... maybe. 👀

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

Okay, I'm going for some more low-hanging fruit. Here's something from my most recent DADWC fill that involves Pravin trying to goad Cullen into talking about his sex life.

Cullen let out a mortified sigh that spoke volumes. He threw on the fresh tunic as if hiding under a blanket. This was going to be harder than Pravin thought; usually men of a certain calibre enjoyed the whetstone talk — a chance to speak of how well they polished their swords with the ladies, so to speak. 

“Well,” Pravin said gently, “how did it go last time?” 

Through the fabric, Cullen mumbled, “I might have apologized more than was wise.”

“During?” 

“Perhaps… near the end.”

Inspired by this hilarious YouTube video.

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

Ohhhh, that's a hard one, because a lot of times in the past I've thought, "Oh, I'll never write X" and then end up writing it 🤣 So I'll never say never, but there are a few I can think of that I'm not that interested in, so it would take a really exciting idea to get me to try.

I'm not all that big on dream sequences or stuff that would happen in the Fade. I was warned away from dream sequences in writing school because, it was explained to me, they are wasted narrative space since dreams have no consequences. I don't think this is necessarily true, but I do think they are tricky, and you can end up undercutting the tension and suspense in your story by putting too much emphasis on the abstract symbolism that would happen in dreams. Likewise, I think setting sequences in the Fade works well as a game mechanic, but I haven't found a compelling reason to use it in fic. I'd just rather have all the characters in waking life dealing with real world events.

All that said, I did write Thalia having a sort of hallucinatory fever dream vision once, and it was really challenging for me. I ended up liking it okay, but I'm not sure I'm eager to try it again, lol.

Another trope that seems common but I'll probably never write is the incorporation of magic in smut. I get the appeal, but I always imagined doing magic as being rather mentally taxing (bleedover from DND/Pathfinder where most spells require concentration, maybe?), so I have a hard time imagining Thalia would want to do it in the bedroom. Seems like way too much work! She'd want her mind to be focused on other things.