#Slot drain systems

[a-substantial-trash-pile]

hey guess what. it's finally time for my Stardew Valley Loredump. i’m about to ramble about my farmer and yo-yo/yoba and shane in a probably long-ass, disjointed post because i have a problem ok. not expecting anyone to read it all of course—just want to finally write these brainstorming shenanigans down. the loredump will be below the cut below the image 👇 (WARNING: IT'S LONG):

SAMUEL IZAWA:

*samuel is 28 years old, pan, japanese okinawan (no im not self projecting hahaha), and goes by he/they. main thing is that they’re from “our world” where stardew valley is a video game, but he died and ended up in the stardew universe. because i think isekai tropes are fun and silly. as the player, samuel can do things others in the stardew world can’t do, such as: 

summon the in-game HUD that’s only visible to him, so he can see health/energy levels and inventory and all that.

speaking of inventory, it’s essentially a pocket dimension samuel can shove stuff in. the inventory doesn’t really care about size/weight/etc as long as it’s something the system considers an “item.” so like samuel can put a whole ass four poster bed in there but he can’t do that to a person or a whole house. samuel just needs to touch the item to make it disappear into his inventory. he can then summon it back out when he needs it. the game’s inventory limit system remains the same. samuel gets 12 slots on their own, but if they have a bag on them it increases to 36.

can access the player menu you can normally access in game. so like profile, skills, collections, relationships, etc are all there. no options or quit tab though. having the relationship tab is a nightmare for samuel, who has major insecurities about what people think of him. that tab is a quantifiable measure on how much people like him. it a real brain demon for him to know it exists and is right there for him to access anytime. 

can see the “stats” of food and healing items. hp/energy recovery amounts, buffs, etc. 

*funny thing is that samuel has never played SDV himself and only has knowledge based on what he’s heard and seen online secondhand. ironically he was planning on playing the game for the first time before the whole dying thing ruined it. they can’t even remember how they died, but it doesn’t bother them as much as they think it should. they didn’t leave much behind in that life.

*anyway, i’m talking a lot of game terms here, but don’t get it twisted. while samuel has all these game systems going on, the SDV world is very much a real one that doesn’t normally work by that logic. by that i mean time flows normally like in our world and there isn’t just 4 months in a year. things exist outside the valley. there’s a whole planet of places and people. 

*luckily samuel has help in navigating this new world in the form of yo-yo the junimo, who is the first living thing samuel sees when he first wakes up in that joja cubicle. yo-yo helps explain a lot of things and guide samuel around in its own abrasive way. he’s also there to be like, “hey i gave you a second chance at life so you kinda owe me actually. sign this contract.” and samuel, who is a pushover and also confused, is just like, “ok.” (yo-yo sounds like danny devito btw. because i think it’s funny.) 

*i call the contract a “magical girl contract” because that’s essentially what it is. samuel gets access to extra powers/abilities on top the stuff he can already do as a player. in return he fights monsters n shit for yo-yo and generally does things for them that they can’t do easily on their own. the extra benefits include: 

higher pain tolerance. which isn’t always a good thing. especially when you tend to not be great with self-preservation like samuel is. 

can heal most injuries by just eating/drinking stuff to regain hp.

yo-yo can teleport the both of them around as needed, but it’s tiring and it drains a lot of magic. distance matters too.

yo-yo can spawn items but it drains magic as well. the more valuable/rare the item, the more draining it is. spawning items is already a magic-intensive thing in the first place. also yo-yo isn’t creating the item out of nothing. they’re actually randomly taking it from wherever it already exists in the world. for example, say yo-yo “spawns” a jar of pickles. somebody in the world is going to open their fridge and discover their jar of pickles is missing or maybe a grocery store will have a sudden empty spot on its shelf. yo-yo doesn’t have control of where the items are taken from (or so they claim).

samuel and yo-yo’s magic pools became connected so they can both do more than they could do on their own before. this is one of the reasons why yo-yo wanted a contract with samuel, who has a larger magic pool than normal due to being from another world. but it’s possible for one side to use up all the magic for the both of them. 

*samuel’s personality can be summed up as Awkward People-Pleasing Tired Sad Garbage Dork. either he’s dressed like a grandparent in sweaters and turtlenecks or he’s wearing a button up shirt with the collar undone and jeans. they usually have their neck covered in public to hide the mark of yoba embedded there. he has a “resting bitch face” as some may call, but that’s just because his brain is busy over-analyzing 193828 different things. he loves being outside in the grass and dirt, looking at bugs n shit. he’s also a nerd who likes to play video games and ramble about the lore in them (he likes RPGs the most, but if the game’s got a good story and cool world, he’s into it). they like to do things with their hands like model building/painting. in their new stardew life, they get into woodcarving after willy teaches them the basics (he carves shane a little chicken). 

*samuel does NOT know how to say “no.” absolute pushover. their self-worth is based on how much they’re liked by others, which isn’t healthy obviously. he has a fear that the only way he can be liked is by being useful. he’s scared that he is inherently a bad and selfish person, because he can’t say for sure if he’s helping others purely out of kindness or because it just makes him feel better about existing. deep down there’s anger/frustration that’s accumulated over the years, anger towards himself and also others because he’s always doing things for other people—going above and beyond—but it never feels like enough. at the same time though, they hate it when these thoughts come up because they believe that you shouldn’t go into helping somebody expecting that you’ll get something out of it. he hates how much of a hypocrite he is. he hates how he bases so much of his self-worth on the opinions of others, but feels helpless to it. they usually just push these emotions down because samuel feels guilty about them. how can they be a good person if they’re thinking like this? how can they deserve to exist with this mindset? however they get a chance to let out the anger/bitterness/frustration through fighting monsters. kind of disassociating in a way. this also isn’t a good thing because his demeanor is much colder and scarier during combat. having someone who’s felt powerless for so long suddenly gain power is a dangerous thing.

*this mindset when monster fighting shatters when samuel meets krobus and realizes that monsters aren’t just the simple enemy NPCs their brain had been automatically categorizing them as. guilt galore. he gets real depressed about that for a while but yo-yo, krobus, and shane are there to help him. 

*SPEAKING OF SHANE… it’s crush at first sight for samuel because hot damn is shane their type. i mean just look at him. mamma mia. haha anyyyway, they first meet at the stardrop saloon. samuel’s waiting at the bar for his to-go order near where shane is drinking. shane’s looking sad, so samuel gives in and decides they’ll start a convo to maybe distract him from whatever’s bothering him. samuel employs the “crack a dumb joke to hide the fact that i’m nervous because i’m talking to a hot person and then use that opening to introduce myself” strat. shane, being an asshole, is like, “oh so you’re the new farmer. here’s a tip: don’t bother me.” samuel takes 999 damage and their brain immediately goes “THIS IS MY FAULT I FUCKED UP like who wants to be talked to by a stranger when they’re sad goddammit why am i so bad at this?!!” it’s overall not a great first impression. after that, samuel tries to avoid shane out of embarrassment, but circumstances keep making them run into each other. for instance, samuel works a lot with marnie with her being a mentor figure to him in animal husbandry, so he and shane have a lot of opportunity to interact through that (plus marnie is secretly trying to get them closer to each other). through these meetings and shenanigans, samuel and shane get to know each other better until one day they’re friends. then good friends. then best friends. then kiss friends. then marry friends. :)

YOBA (A.K.A. YO-YO): 

*yo-yo is ????? years old and goes by any pronouns but most of the time it's it/they.

*yo-yo is actually THE yoba, but they’re not the completely benevolent creator-of-all-things humans have made them out to be. maybe they were in the past, but now they’re selfish and rude and swear a lot. but they do still care, even if they don’t admit it (tsundere-ass). yoba is currently stuck in the form of a little junimo and is substantially weakened because it gave too much of itself away to the world in the past and got burned for it. because the world kept taking and taking. and now there’s war and pollution and shit and yoba/yo-yo is maybe just a teensy tiny bit angry and bitter now. but it’s ok because now they got this human from another reality to help them reclaim the pieces of itself. and maybe along the way relearn how to love the world again.  

*oh also yoba didn’t create the whole planet like the creation story claims. they’re technically an alien that came across a young planet full of life and decided to stay and help it develop. 

*main reason yo-yo made a contract with samuel is because it needs help finding/reclaiming the pieces of itself. pieces can usually be found in strong monsters empowered by the piece. this isn’t always the case though. sometimes it’s in an ancient artifact. sometimes it’s in a specific place like a temple. sometimes it’s in a person. 

*samuel doesn’t have to deal with having an existential crisis about yo-yo, since he’s from our world where yoba doesn’t even exist as a god. yo-yo claims to be the one responsible for bringing samuel over into the stardew universe, but there are holes in their story. where did yoba even find the power to do such a thing when they’re in such a weakened state? mysterious. 

*the first time yoba reveals itself to shane is kind of chaotic. it’s in the middle of the night when yo-yo suddenly appears in shane’s room, grabs his face with its little stick arms and yells, “WAKE UP!!! YOUR BOYFRIEND IS IN MORTAL PERIL!!!” shane is like, “WHAT THE F–”     it was an act of desperation on yo-yo’s part, because samuel was in trouble and shane was the only one it could think of going to for help. essentially samuel meets something Bad in the deep mines, something that takes him out of commission and puts him in a trance state while draining his lifeforce. y’know, the classic kind of trance state where you need to figure out how to get the person back–how to snap them out of it. yo-yo tried and failed, so that’s where shane comes in. it’s the classic “love-interest-breaks-main-character-out-of-mind-control-with-sheer-power-of-love” trope. except shane does punch samuel during it. lovingly. in the face. hey it works ok.     after the chaos is over and everyone’s safe and gathered together, samuel and yo-yo explain everything to shane (well more like samuel explains everything while yo-yo wishes outloud that they had their memory erasing powers back). shane, who is canonically an atheist, learns that this talking pottymouthed jerkass apple is actually THE yoba and is just like, “yeah. this might as well happen.” and then he remains atheist because what else are you going to do when you learn that god is a talking pottymouthed jerkass apple who calls you a bitch and is also responsible for your partner having to go do dangerous shit. he and yo-yo have a rocky relationship at first to say the least. but once they both realize how much the other cares about samuel, things get a little better. 

*yeah, yoba may be a bitch and they may be angry and they may be bitter, but they really do care, even if they try to convince themselves otherwise. even though so much got taken from it, it still cares about humans and dwarves and shadow people and everything else on the planet. and when it eventually comes down to it, yoba will step up to protect what it loves, even if it means losing everything again. 

SHANE FINCH: 

*this post was technically supposed to just be about my farmer and yo-yo’s lore and stuff, but i gotta give some personal headcanons i have about shane… like for instance his last name is “finch.” because i thought the bird theme was cute. he’s 29 years old, bi, and half asian, half white (in our world that asian half is korean). i’m not being specific because i don’t know if korea even exists in the stardew world, since all we know in the game is that there’s a “ferngill republic” and a “gotoro empire.” i was thinking of just headcanoning that stardew’s planet is essentially the same as earth. so like most of the same countries/nations exist except the history diverged a bit along the way, leading to the ferngill republic and gotoro empire. OK SORRY for the tangent—back on topic.

*so shane is a trans man who started transitioning back in high school. he had two best friends who were very supportive and really helped him on his journey to figure himself out. those two friends were like family to him. it was good that he had this support because his parents were always pretty shitty and shane transitioning just made them act even shittier. the only good family member of shane’s is marnie, who was supportive, but she lived far away, was busy, AND wasn’t on good terms with her sister (shane’s mom), so shane didn’t get to see her much. 

*the moment shane became a legal adult, he got away from his parents, finding a place with his two best friends and moving in together. oh and his friends’ names were rosa and heath. should’ve probably mentioned that earlier oops.     shane, rosa, and heath go to the same college together, suffer student loans, graduate, etc. haven’t thought of what shane would get a degree in yet—most likely something “generic” because he’s unsure of what he wants to do himself (i feel u bby). 

*ok so rosa and heath were dating since high school, but they were so comfortable with shane and vice versa that things never got that awkward living together. however when rosa and heath got married (“yoba, FINALLY,” shane would say), shane felt like it was time to find his own place, much to the devastation of his bffs. the apartment ended up close to where rosa and heath lived of course—the couple made sure of it (“stop backseating my apartment hunting!” “MAKE US”). 

*rosa and heath get pregnant and have a healthy baby girl that they name jasmine. i headcanon jas as black (from heath’s side) and portuguese (rosa’s side). everyone is thrilled about the baby. shane was immediately offered godfather role and he happily accepted. jas was the cutest baby ever and he adored her. he babysat jas all the time. 

*jas was 4 years old when rosa and heath tragically passed away in a car accident. they were coming home from a business dinner when they lost control of their car on some black ice and slid into oncoming traffic. shane was babysitting jas when he got the call. in the span of one cold winter night, shane and jas’s world shattered. 

*rosa and heath didn’t have any reliable relatives either. those relatives only came to take the money and belongings. shane was the only one jas had, so he adopted her. he tried his best to pick up the pieces. he really did. he lasted for a year trying to raise a kid on his own with the salary of a dead-end job, but he knew the situation wasn’t good with the money and how much his mental health was spiraling. he knew he and jas were in dire need of more support (“jas deserves better than this”). so he turned to the one person he had left to rely on: his aunty marnie. and that’s how shane and jas ended up in pelican town.

*shane’s joja jacket was actually originally rosa’s. rosa worked as an accountant for joja and would get free promotional items all the time from the company. the jacket was one of the only things she actually ended up using because “it’s pretty comfy for being joja bs.” she would wear it all the time, much to her more fashion-conscious husband’s chagrin (yet he would patch up any holes she’d get in it anyway). after rosa died, shane kept her jacket. there were a lot of memories in it. 

~~~

ok that’s it for now. if anyone actually read all that, thank you for even wasting your time to process my ramblings. i’m sorry it’s so fucking long like jfc.

*who is mr. qi?

[felassan]

New BioWare Blog post:

"Journal #6 Lethality and Levelling An inside look into Rook’s Warrior combat Hello everyone, Since our summer reveal in June, we’ve been reading all the great excitement for the game and listening closely to what you’d like to see next. Our reveal trailer showed off the prologue and very beginning of the game, and now we want to shift our focus to higher level combat. Today, we’re going to cover our game’s combat system, looking at how Rook and Companions can be built up to meet the perils facing Thedas, using deep RPG systems. This starts with choosing a desired class as there are three main classes to select from when creating Rook: stalwart Warrior, deft Rogue, or spell-slinging Mage. This blog and accompanying videos will focus on the Warrior class, and we’ll have more to share on the other classes before launch."

"PREPARE FOR BATTLE By choosing Warrior, the fighting style revolves around close range combat and defense. Skills, Traits, Runes, and Abilities are customizable to best suit that type of playstyle. The loadout will have slots for Abilities, accessed from the Ability Wheel. Picking which Abilities from the many in the arsenal to bring into battle is a strategic choice made for each encounter, and they can be swapped out anytime, except during combat. For some added depth, there are up to three equipable Runes. Runes provide a variety of control, utility, or additional damage to synergize with your build. While in combat, all three Runes can be cycled through and activated. There are a wide range of potential Abilities that are unique to each Class and can be customized by spending Skill Points. For example, the Warrior class will have certain abilities that deal fire damage. Players can plan their build around this, and each skill point spent could be in pursuit of this build. Each step taken is designed to augment Rook and/or Abilities. Eventually, Rook will gain access to Specializations, which grant powerful Abilities, unique to each Specialization. These Specializations will also provide a unique Ultimate Ability (more on that later below) tuned to the theme of that Specialization, so a Warrior specializing as a Grey Warden Champion will gain access to the devastating incendiary Warden’s Fire that launches a flurry of searing strikes that ignite foes like tinder. This is the best Specialization Area for defeating darkspawn, an enemy that many Dragon Age fans know well. Check out all the Specialization Areas below (minor gameplay spoilers) and we’ll have a separate spotlight on progression later as well."

"Warrior Rook Specialization Areas: Reaper - Become night's blade. Steal life and risk death to gain incredible, unnatural abilities Slayer - Leap into the fray. Wield massive, punishing weapons while rushing enemies to deal devastating blows. Champion - Be the shield. Shrug off damage while summoning righteous fire down on enemies. Rogue Rook Specialization Areas: Duelist - Draw your steel. Parry and dodge past enemies to gain strength with every strike. Saboteur - Set the stage. Deploy explosives and turrets that devastate enemies, then pick them off with arrows. Veil Ranger - Hunt the enemy. Snipe enemies from afar using artifacts that charge arrows with dangerous, powerful magic. Mage Rook Specialization Areas: Death Caller - Embrace the dark. Drain life from enemies and cast spells that writhe with the essence of death itself Evoker - Call the void. Freeze enemies in their tracks, then summon the deepest cold to tear them apart. Spellblade - Be the storm. Channel potent spells for close-quarters combat infused with lightning's wrath."

COMBAT BASICS Now let’s talk about the foundations of the combat system. The four core moves that all three classes share include jump, dodge, light attack, and heavy attack, which can all be chained together. Rook can dodge at any time, even mid-attack, which adds fluidity to the combat. Is taking damage or dealing it better at that moment? Light attacks do quick damage and build small amounts of stagger; heavier attacks are slower and build more stagger to your opponent. Once enough stagger is built, the enemy will be rendered more vulnerable to all incoming damage and allows Rook to perform a takedown.  Each of these attacks (light and heavy) can be charged by holding down the button to deliver a more potent version of the strike. For example, a heavy attack can be charged while using a staff to unleash a magical wave of destructive energy. Attacks can also be triggered while sprinting and/or jumping to add depth and fluidity to combat. In addition, each class has ranged attacks, blocks (or parries, if timed properly with the right weapon set), and the ability to control Companions’ combat strategy. Each Class also has two distinct weapon sets, which can be swapped seamlessly in the heat of battle. This drastically changes the available move-sets and strategies. Heavy attacks remove Armor Barrier (denoted by a yellow bar) faster, and ranged attacks remove Shield Barrier (denoted by a blue bar) faster. There is also the Stagger meter (denoted by a lavender bar) which builds as hits are landed against an enemy. Stagger creates opportunities for bonus damage and special Takedowns.  The Ability Wheel pauses the fight for more precise control over Rook’s own abilities and those of their Companions, and where those tactical RPG elements come into play. Players can use the Ability Wheel to assign Companions to attack specific enemies, individually or together. Abilities can also be bound shortcut keys to keep the action flow going, instead of always bringing up the Ability Wheel. Vulnerabilities and resistances of enemies can also be seen while targeting enemies in the Ability Wheel. For example, Darkspawn are weak to fire damage."

"BUFFS, DEBUFFS & CROWD CONTROL Some Abilities apply buffs or debuffs to help you in the fight. For example, Davrin has the Heroic Strike Ability which applies the Overwhelmed debuff to enemies. This will increase the enemies’ Stagger and make it easier for Rook to perform a Takedown. There are also Area of Effect Abilities to help the party defeat large groups of enemies. Controlling the field of battle is a key consideration in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Players will need to consider which buffs/debuffs or crowd control Abilities will work best for each situation.   Abilities require Class Resources (Mana, Momentum & Rage) to be able to use. Each class primarily builds up their Class Resource by dealing damage with basic attacks. In addition, each class has a secondary way to build their Class Resource - Warriors build Rage by taking and dealing damage, Rogues build Momentum by dodging attacks and parrying successfully, and Mages regain Mana passively over time.   Warriors who go into battle with a sword-and-shield build, will have access to the Shield Throw Volley. By landing a Heavy Attack on a Shield Throw return, the shield will ricochet, taking out multiple enemies. This sequence can repeat up to three times, causing a devastating ring of damage around Rook. This attack works well against swarms as well as distant adversaries. Other ways to manage distant enemies lean into Companion abilities, such as Davrin’s Death from Above to send Assan, his griffon, to attack enemies. Warriors also have the Grappling Spear Ability to pull enemies close for an easier victory. With these tools, attacks can be chosen based on the type of enemy and the situation to dispatch foes in the most optimal way, especially on higher difficulties."

"PRIMERS, DETONATORS & ULTIMATES Many Abilities include some type of coordinating effect and serve as either a Primer or a Detonator that can result in devastating combo attacks when properly executed with the Companions. These Ability combos can be set up in the Ability Wheel.  Finally, you have your most powerful attack: Rook’s Class Ultimate Ability. Doing damage to enemies increases your Ultimate Meter. The Ultimate Meter won’t fully fill during smaller skirmishes, because they are designed to decimate a significant swath of the battlefield or the toughest bosses.  All of these options combine together to create a rich combat experience that is highly customizable. The entire Skill Tree is also fully refundable, and Skill Points can be redistributed. We encourage you to try out multiple builds, use different Abilities for each mission, and change up the Companions you bring into battle. These videos have highlighted several of the ways that players can achieve strategic combat in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We’ve put them all together in case you wanted to see them back-to-back. Check out the full video below! there’s a lot to explore in the game and a lot more to talk about. We’ll have more to share on the Rogue and Mage before launch, as well. Next week, we look forward to companions week, along with another Discord Q&A planned for August 30th where we can answer more of your questions about the game. Chat soon!             — The Dragon Age Community Team"

[source] <- video links at link

[digitalgirlguide]

Beyond Bubble Baths: A Realistic Guide to Wellness, Hygiene Hacks, Energy Cleansing, and the Art of Setting Healthy Boundaries

self-care as we know it has been reduced to retail therapy and splurging on skincare and the the essence of true well-being often gets lost in the noise of buying stuff.

you're not alone, i'm guilty of this too.if i'm sad i buy thing. i'm happy? i buy things.

and not saying that self care can't be buying yourself things because you feel like it but that's not a true reflection of self care.

self-care is a disciplined commitment to becoming the best version of yourself while tuning into your body's needs.

so what does realistic self care look like?

Take a few minutes each morning to set intentions for the day ahead.

practice gratitude by writing 3 things you're grateful for or using some of these prompts:

What are three things you are thankful for as you start your day? Consider the small details that often go unnoticed.

Recall a specific moment from today that brought a smile to your face or warmed your heart. Describe it in detail and express gratitude for that experience.

Think about any unexpected surprises or acts of kindness that came your way. How did they make you feel, and why are you grateful for them?

Before your next meal, reflect on the journey of your food from its source to your plate. Express gratitude for the nourishment it provides your body.

Organizing your day/week:

Plan with Purpose: Start your week with a glance at your calendar or planner. Note any upcoming deadlines, appointments, or social events. (A little prep goes a long way!)

Prioritize with Intent: Identify your top priorities for the week and break them down into manageable tasks. Tackling the most crucial items first ensures a sense of accomplishment. (Check off those big to-dos, and watch the momentum build!)

Time Blocking: Allocate specific time blocks for various activities. This technique helps maintain focus and prevents the day from slipping away in a blur. (Time blocking = your new productivity bestie.)

Flexibility is Key: While planning is essential, leave room for flexibility. Life throws curveballs, and being adaptable ensures you can navigate unexpected changes with grace. (Embrace the spontaneity – it's the spice of life!)

Self-Care Slots: Intentionally carve out moments for self-care throughout the week. Whether it's a short walk, a cozy reading break, or a meditation session, these are non-negotiable appointments with yourself. (Because self-love is a crucial part of productivity.)

Schedule regular social activities to stay connected: Meaningful connections are the backbone of a healthy support system. (Humans need socialization – it's science!)

Hygiene tips for mind and body

Begin your day with a cleansing ritual that extends beyond the physical. Consider practices like meditation (Remember, a cluttered mind can be just as burdensome as a cluttered space.)

Incorporate energy cleansing techniques into your routine, such as using crystals (clear quartz, black tourmaline, amethyst, rose quartz, selenite) to clear negative energy from your surroundings. (Just as we dust and declutter our physical spaces, it's important to cleanse the energetic residue that accumulates throughout our day-to-day lives.)

Recognize the importance of setting boundaries and restricting access to yourself when necessary. (You're not obligated to be constantly available to others, and it's okay to prioritize your own needs and well-being.) Surround yourself with people who uplift and inspire you, who make you feel good and encourage you to be your best self. (Life is too short to waste time on relationships that drain your energy and diminish your spirit.)

Embrace a straightforward yet consistent skincare routine. Cleanse, moisturize, and shield your skin from the sun – simplicity meets effectiveness.

Practice regular handwashing to ward off germs, especially before meals and after restroom visits. (Your hands will thank you, and so will your immune system.)

Simple ways to show up for yourself everyday

Practice self-compassion and forgiveness, recognizing that perfection is an illusion and mistakes are opportunities for growth. (We're all human, and it's okay to stumble along the way.)

Listen to your body's signals and honor its needs, whether that means nourishing yourself with wholesome food, getting regular exercise, or allowing yourself time to rest and recharge. (Your body is your greatest ally and deserves to be treated with kindness and respect.)

Embrace moments of joy and playfulness, indulging in activities that bring you laughter and delight. (Life is meant to be savored, not endured.)

let's reshape the narrative of self-care into a journey of discipline, mindfulness, and attunement to our inner voices.

[mlb-a-rewrite]

Miraculous Make No Sense

so I changed how they work.

I love me a well-thought-out and deliberate magic system. I love seeing the different rules and properties of how magic works and I love seeing how the author expands and works around those rules. Limitations are placed, followed, and then explored.

Miraculous Ladybug doesn't do this.

The powers are unbalanced and unrestrained. Miraculous can do whatever the writers want them to whenever they need it to happen. There are no limitations to the powers and the powers don't balance one another out.

This was the first issue I tackled in my rewrite.

Miraculous Overview

I decided that there are two "categories" for miraculous. They are either first or second-ring miraculous. (This is taking inspiration from the miracle box featured in the show and how the miraculous are organized into different rings).

What ring a miraculous belongs to determines how "powerful" it is. All miraculous, regardless of what ring or miracle box they belong to, have the following features:

It is a piece of jewelry

It is connected to and contain imagery of an animal

When a miraculous is worn by a person, the person will be granted, regardless of what ring or miracle box the miraculous belongs to, the following items:

They will now be able to see all Kwamis (regardless of miracle box or ring affiliation)

A unique phrase that will allow them to transform between civilian attire and hero attire

If a person is transformed, they will:

Get a magic girl costume and a magical girl transformation! The costume combines elements of the wearer's personal tastes and the animal associated with the miraculous

Have general enhancements (i.e. they are faster, stronger, have quicker reflexes, etc. but mental capabilities remain unchanged; if they’re dumb as fuck they stay dumb as fuck)

Have a magic weapon/object unique to the miraculous that serves at the housing unit of their special ability

One power unique to their miraculous

All miraculous have the attributes featured above, however, a first-ring miraculous grants the wearer 2 additional special abilities that a second-ring miraculous doesn't.

Special Abilities

In the rewrite, the special ability unique to the miraculous is how I am classifying the powers of each character. Cataclysm, Lucky Charm, Mirage, Venom, etc. are all the special abilities of each miraculous.

Second-ring miraculous have temporary special abilities. If the fox miraculous wearer casts Mirage and then detransforms, Mirage deactivates the illusion dissipates. However, first-ring special abilities are permanent (with one exception, more on that later). So when a ladybug wearer uses Restoration ("Restoration" being the new name for the "Miraculous Ladybug" power seen in the show) and then detransforms, all the damage they just repaired stays repaired.

Powers are also draining to the wearer. The bigger or more precise the use of the power is, the more physically draining it is. It takes a lot of strength, both physically and mentally, as well as a deep connection with the miraculous/kwami to use it for a wider range of uses. It is pretty easy for a black cat wearer to activate cataclysm and let it do whatever it wants, but it is more difficult to control that damage to a certain area or to destroy tougher materials. This adds more restrictions to the powers and gives the characters something to work on.

First-Ring vs. Second-Ring

For second-ring miraculous, there is only one special ability, hence why the fox miraculous only has mirage, but first-ring miraculous have multiple (why the ladybug miraculous has lucky charm and miraculous ladybug and de-evilize/deakumatization and-). This is because first-ring miraculous are more powerful.

I think of each miraculous wearer as having spell slots. For second-ring wearers, they only have 1 spell slot and 1 spell in that slot they can use. For first-ring wearers, they have 3 spell slots with 2 spells that are permanently stuck there.

To use an example from the show:

Any wearer of the ladybug miraculous, regardless of any differentiating factors, will always be able to use "Lucky Charm" and "Restoration". However, that third spell slot can be switched out to fit the situation. This third slot is there to be able to counteract and balance out other miraculous. So if a wearer of the ladybug miraculous thinks the wearer of the butterfly miraculous is using akumatization for nefarious reasons, that third "slot" would acquire a "spell" that directly combats akumatization, which is where the de-evilize ability in the show comes in.

This third ability only exists to combat other miraculous. If, for instance, a ladybug wearer is fighting in a war, the third ability won't make them bullet proof or something because guns are not a product or feature of a miraculous. The third ability only develops to counteract other miraculous.

In addition to that, this third ability only develops as a result of intense emotion. If a ladybug wearer just dislikes another wearer, the third ability isn't going to manifest, but if the ladybug wearer truly believes with every fiber of their being that another miraculous is being used for evil, then the ability will form.

So in the show, Marinette doesn't gain the ability to de-evilize right away. Only when she gets deeply and emotionally invested in the battle does that third ability form.

The final bit about the third power is that you can only use one third power at at a time. Going back to the spell slot analogy, you can have multiple spells you know how to use, but because there is only one slot available, you can only "equip" one spell at a time. When a spell is replaced with another, its effects disappear. Since two of the spell slots are permanently taken up, there is only one "customizable" spell slot.

Final Notes

Miraculous are all about balance. All miracle boxes have 2 rings, and the first ring only ever have 2 miraculous. These miraculous are always opposites and balance each other.

Which is why it makes no sense that Ladybug has so many fancy ass powers and Chat Noir only has cataclysm. Like what??????? So I ended up severely limiting Ladybug's powers and adding more restrictions and clarification. I also wrote in a new power for Chat Noir but this is already long enough so I'll save those details for a different post. :)

[ranticore]

Settling Siren, the deep dream, and dream rot

This is something I can't present with accompanying art so I will present it with accompanying prose, from an anonymous archaeologist's research paper on the mechanism by which the very first human on Siren was 'born'. I wrote a whole bunch like this and I'd like to share it some day as a type of web serial thing, following two parallel in-universe stories separated by thousands of years (the story of Ishmael, the first human born on Siren, and the story of the archaeologist uncovering the past who was forced into hiding and had to publish this stuff anonymously) but it's early stages for now.

But one bit of the world that I'm happy with is the dream & delayed birth, a way to grow a human during long space voyages so that they can be old enough to work (or study, in this case) when the voyage is over. This means they grow up in a false reality, and may only take their first breaths when they're years old. More valuable humans just get cryogenically frozen and don't age, creating a two-tiered system. Anyway the writing below explains it better than I can, check it out

The Lonely Sailor was owned by Atom GeneWeave and would carry a cargo container full of fertilised Human eggs to the new world. These were known as embryos and were mostly held in a frozen state, but there were twenty of them which were not frozen. They were placed in false amniotic sacs and allowed to continue growing throughout the entire voyage of The Lonely Sailor, even though the adult Humans themselves would be frozen, too.

Dan Lorvis slotted his first viable attempt at life into the cargo hold last, knowing that it would be the first to wake. He used a computer machine called a Deep Dreamer to monitor the growing life, and encoded within it an operation called ‘Athletic_Boy_Childhood_03.deepdr‘. He wrote on the amniotic sac the name of his creation: Ishmael 1© property of ATOM GENEWEAVE®.

Dan Lorvis then settled himself into a sleeping chamber which would freeze him harmlessly for the duration of the voyage.

The journey from Ceti to Siren would take seven years. Ishmael grew from fertilised egg to embryo and then became a baby in the normal period of time that these things take. But he was not born then. He remained asleep, dreaming that he was living a Human childhood.

Contemporary scholars such as ourselves can only guess at what he dreamed of, as the memory encoded into him was designed to fade, leaving behind only the lessons that Atom felt were necessary for him to learn, to function normally and not emerge from the seven year journey in a feral state. He learned how to speak, how to read and write, all without ever having taken a single breath. When he was old enough, he moved his body as though he were engaging in games of chase and team sports, and this allowed his muscles to develop.

(...)

The embryo cargo pod was offloaded thirty-nine days after landing on Siren, still in the first year. Five days later, Ishmael’s amniotic sac was drained, and his deep dream interrupted by his birth.

The last moment of his encoded dream was common to all artificial dreams, designed to ease the transition into true waking life. He was falling asleep in his bed (an archaic sort of bower), his body feeling tired but satisfied after a day of typical, perfectly generic childhood games. He had something called a mother in this dream who pulled the blankets around his shoulders and kissed him as he drifted off, though he did not remember what their face looked like, only that they instilled within him a sense of perfect safety.

His moment of calm was soon eaten by sensation. It was cold, he realised. Colder than anything he had ever felt. The fluid that had supported him at a constant temperature for seven years was draining away and he reached out, to grab at the blanket he half-remembered. His nerves were alight with new sensations and the world was so bright it felt that he was staring into Odr’s eye.

Dan Lorvis described Ishmael as strong and healthy, but he didn’t feel that way. Everything was loud and bright and his body was so heavy. He had never truly experienced gravity, but that alone did not account for the disconnect. His dream had been the dream of a Precursor Human, a bipedal creature with a fully upright stance, straighter even than a shortwing’s, with no tail, no flippers, no phocid morphology. To the newborn Ishmael’s mind, he had just undergone a horrifying transformation, and his body was wrong.

(...)

Cherta, who gave their name to the wandering moon, was the fifth born beta phocid. There is very little to distinguish Cherta from the rest of the group, at this early stage, but I have on file their original description - “‘Cherta’, named for a sponsor of the project who donated three million nua*. Unisex ‘phocid’ of the Beta generation. Born age 10 years and 5 months, in [Year 3]. Melanistic colouring was chosen as protection against solar radiation, but it is expressed in heterogenous patches with a strong dorsal stripe. Length 5’1 nose to tailtip at time of birth and weight 54kg. Unusually violent birth, needed sedation.” In fact, Cherta assaulted Dan Loris’s assistants as they were born, reacting to the event as though it were an invasion of the bedroom of their dream. It was by all accounts an auspicious start compared to the others, and perhaps an indication that Cherta’s experience with the deep dream was not standard.

Cherta had fallen victim to another rare phenomenon of the incubator, referred to by Dan Loris as ‘dream rot’. This occurrence is a result of differences in the receiving brain, rather than the dream machine itself. The brain begins to understand, in some form, that what it is witnessing is not reality, and the structure of the dream begins to unravel.

At the time of Cherta’s delayed birth, the dream had been in the early stages of this process. If allowed to continue for too long, permanent damage to the psyche’s ability to judge reality is the result. Cherta would be haunted by this for the remainder of their life and suffer from regular seizures that severely reduced their ability to swim like any other phocid, but it was not severe enough to significantly alter their treatment compared to the other beta phocids.

[goldenempyrean]

Stubborn As Ever

〚 Notes - First Marina fic :D Hopefully you enjoy <3 I loved writing these two so if you've got any ideas, send em over! 〛

〚 Pairing- Maya Bishop x Carina DeLuca 〛

〚 Summary - Maya is sick at work, Carina comes to take her home. 〛

〚 Wordcount - 1900 〛

〘 Check Out My Masterlist! 〙

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“Bishop.” A loud voice echoed through the bunks as a very annoyed looking Herrera looked down from the balcony, her on her hips, “Don’t you dare start an epidemic in this station.” 

Maya sniffled, titling her head to look up at her, “I’m fine Andy.” She grumbled, sniffling loudly before quickly wiping her nose on her sleeve. 

“You’re fooling nobody.” 

Herrera's expression softened as she descended the steps, concern etched across her features as she came face to face with the pale blonde, “You look sooo healthy Bishop, so very not sick.” The sarcasm was thick in her voice but her tone all sympathy. 

This was bound to happen eventually. It was Winter - prime cold and flu season. In fact they’d already dropped off two patients at Grey Sloan earlier after they’d presented dehydration and flu symptoms. 

Of course it was just an occupational hazard. Just another part of the job. And while most of the crew did have pretty good immune systems, eventually everyone gets sick somehow. This was Maya’s turn. 

“You have a fever estúpida.” Andy sighed, the back of her palm pressed against her best friend’s forehead, whistling through her teeth at the heat radiating from her, “God you’re as stubborn as ever.” Maya only groaned in reply, waving her hand dismissively but she could protest further, a sudden sneeze had her jolting forwards, catching both of them off guard. 

Herrera’s face twisted as she jumped back in surprise, “Oh Maya! Ew!” She shook her head, “I’m literally covered in your-  ugh, just, never mind. You’re going home, right now. You hear me?” 

Her voice held the ‘don’t you dare argue with me right now or I will make your life hell’ tone, one Maya didn’t have the strength or will to argue with right now. Instead, the blonde simply nodded, allowing Andy to pull her up as she walked her to the front desks. 

“Sit.” A tissue box was stolen from another desk and swiftly placed in front of Maya as she sat down in one of the swivelling chairs, “I’ll call Carina, alright? I doubt your wife will forgive me if I let you keel in the streets over while trying to stumble home.” 

Maya sniffled again, reaching for the tissue box and blowing her nose loudly. She winced at the sound, feeling utterly drained as she leaned back in the chair. Andy hovered nearby, worry etched on her face as she dialled Carina's number. 

It was picked up after only two rings, “Hello? Hi Carina, it’s Andy.” Herrera began explaining the situation and that Maya definitely needed to be taken home. 

“Yeah, she’s here with me right now.” She looked down just in time to see Maya’s head bob down into a crumpled handful of tissues, sneezing twice in rapid succession, “Yup, thats her. Are you sure? Okay, thank you so much. That’s great. We’ll see you soon.” 

“She’s coming to pick you up.” The brunette smiled as she set the phone down back on the retriever. Maya simply nodded before muffling a deep cough into her arm, “You really don’t do things by half do you? Come here, let me check your actual temp’ please.” 

“I was fine earlier.” The firefighter groaned in response, slumping back in the chair. Andy rolled her eyes and reached down to grab the thermometer from the first aid kit they kept beneath the desk. “Vic’s already out, I need to be here.” Maya continued to mumble. 

“The difference is Vic actually told us she wasn’t feeling well when she felt this coming on and you had to sense to send her home. So, when did you feel this coming on, hm? Because I’m betting it’s been a few hours. Now, come on, turn this way for me.”  

She did so - reluctantly.  As she turned to the side, Andy slotted the thermometer into her ear and pressed down the button. It beeped once and they waited a few moments for the second beep. 

As the device beeped again, Andy glanced at the reading, her brows furrowing slightly. "Well, congratulations, Captain. You've officially joined the ranks of the feverish.” She let her hand move to gently rub her shoulder, “She’ll be here soon.” 

As Maya sat there, feeling increasingly miserable, she couldn't help but sneeze again, the force of it causing her to double over slightly. Andy frowned sympathetically, handing her another tissue before reassuringly patting her on the back. 

Just then, the sound of the door opening signalled Carina's arrival. She entered the room with concern etched on her face, quickly assessing Maya's condition. 

“Oh Mai, you look so ill.” Her was soft as she quickly came to the firefighter’s side, “How are you feeling amore mio?” 

Andy watched with a soft smile, watching as her best friend’s-tired eyes slowly grew more awake. She discreetly slipped away to go and gather Maya’s things, giving the two of them a moment of privacy. 

Maya managed a weak smile up at Carina, her eyes watery as she struggled through a chesty cough. "Not great," She admitted, voice strained as she spoke, “Sorry for making you come all the way here just to collect me.” 

“Shh, none of that.” Carina soothed her gently, reaching out to cup her cheeks, “Oh, bambina you are so hot.”  

She moved her hands to press her hand to her girlfriend’s forehead, sighing softly before pressing a gentle kiss to her fever flushed skin. 

“Her temperature’s 101.7.” Herrera chimed in as she came back from collecting Maya’s bags. 

“101.7? That’s…uh, around 38 and a half? Si?” Carina mumbled to herself, still trying to get used to converting to the imperial system. It was one of the many American things she still hadn’t quite gotten used to yet. 

“Poor girl, let’s get you home then bambina, hm?” The Italian purred, offering out her hand to help her girlfriend up from the chair she’d been slumped in, “There’s a nice bed waiting for you when we’re back.” 

“Mmh’bed does sound good right now.” Maya sniffled loudly as she gave into the temptation of climbing into bed and getting cuddles from her beyond amazing girlfriend.  

“You know protocol Bishop, you’re not back in here until at least 24 hours after that fever breaks.” Andy smiled as she held the door open for the two of them. Nodding in mutual understanding as Carina thanked her quietly. 

Luckily Carina hadn’t parked far away, only round the corner. The two of them walked together, Maya taking slow unsteady steps as she swayed before the doctor noticed and put her around her waist. As she did so, she didn’t miss the way Maya shivered as the cold, winter air nipped against her bare skin. “Come here sweetheart, that’s better.” She murmured, taking off her thick cardigan to pull it around her girlfriend’s shoulders instead. 

“It’s- I don’t need this Carina- It’s cold, you need to be warm too.” Maya began to protest but her pleads fell on dead ears. There wasn’t much point to them now anyway, they’d reached Carina’s car already. 

As she helped get Maya settled in the passenger seat, Maya couldn't suppress the itching in her sinuses and suddenly ducked down into her elbow with a series of harsh sneezes, each one followed by an apologetic sniffle. "Sorry, Car’. I promise I'm not doing this on purpose," She looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. Being sick was still something she’d yet to adapt to. Her father’s lessons were still as clear as they’d ever been about that. Eyes forward. Embrace the pain. 

The doctor looked over with sad eyes, pouting as the firefighter sniffled miserably into the sleeve of her borrowed clothes, “Salute bambina. I promise you don’t have to apologise for anything. You’re human, it’s only natural and you can’t control it.” Her voice was soft, but the teasing tone was unmissable as she nudged her lightly, “There’s tissues in the compartment, don’t get your germs on my favourite cardi’ please.” 

Maya raised an eyebrow fondly as she chuckled, well, to be honest it was more of the beginning of a laugh being immediately proceeded by a round of deep coughing. 

Carina murmured something worriedly in Italian as she glanced over at her wife, it was hard not to notice how tired and pale she still looked, despite the warmth of the cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. 

“We’ll get you home, okay?” She reached over to squeeze the blonde’s thigh, “Just sit tight bella.” 

It didn’t take long to reach home. Mainly because Carina had driven at slightly irresponsible speeds. Despite the short journey, it had been long enough for the firefighter’s eyes start to close on their own, her head bobbing forward as Carina pulled into their driveway. 

“Sleepy girl.” Carina murmured, her voice laced with tenderness, trying to rouse her from her drowsiness, “We’re home sweetheart.” 

Maya stirred slightly, blinking groggily as she looked around, momentarily disoriented before remembering where they were. "Home?” She mumbled; her voice thick with exhaustion. 

Carina smiled softly, unbuckling her seatbelt before leaning over to help Maya with hers. "That's right, let's get you inside where you can rest properly," she said, her tone soothing as she opened the car door. 

Maya nodded weakly, allowing Carina to assist her as she stepped out of the car, her legs feeling like jelly beneath her. She sniffled weakly against the brunette’s shoulder as she guided her inside. She murmured something intelligible before legs buckled under her that. Luckily, Carina had been ready, and she carefully scooped Maya into her arms, cradling her gently as she carried her bridal style towards their room. 

Reaching their bedroom, Carina gently laid Maya down on their bed, tucking her in with extra blankets to keep her warm. Maya curled up instinctively, seeking comfort in the softness of their shared sheets. 

"I'll make you some tea, amore," Carina said softly, pressing a tender kiss to Maya's forehead before heading to the kitchen. 

Minutes later, Carina returned with a tray holding a steaming mug of herbal tea and a bowl of soup. She placed it on the bedside table and sat beside Maya, gently stroking her hair. 

"Here, drink this. It'll help you feel better," Carina said, offering her the mug, rubbing her back soothingly as she drank the hot liquid, “That’s better, si?” 

She nodded, letting herself relax into the pillows, “Much.” Maya sniffled, rubbing her hand beneath her nose as it twitched. She just managed to set her cup aside before a sudden bout of sneezing overtook her, each one accompanied by a soft, sleepy sound. Carina chuckled softly, reaching for a tissue to gently dab at Maya's nose. 

“Bless you, amore," she murmured, reaching for a tissue to dab at Maya's nose tenderly, "Looks like someone's still feeling a bit under the weather." 

Maya sniffled, her eyes fluttering open briefly before she buried herself deeper into the warmth of the blankets. "Sorry," she whispered, her voice hoarse with fatigue, "I can't pull myself together.” 

Carina's expression softened further as she continued to stroke Maya's hair soothingly, “You don’t need to pull anything, you just lay there and rest. Just rest now, bella, that’s all. I'll be right here if you need anything," Carina murmured, pressing a soft kiss to her warm forehead, before snuggling in beside her, wrapping a comforting arm around Maya’s front, “Thank you for letting me take you home bambina.” 

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[christiansorrell]

TTRPG Read-Through: Liminal Horror

Here is a read-through I did last year (originally posted on Twitter) of one of the my current go-to game for modern horror: Liminal Horror by Goblin Archives! - Christian

I cut my teeth learning to GM as a Keeper in Call of Cthulhu and I've really been jonesing for a game in this genre that's more in the style of rpg I enjoy these days. I'm hoping this will be it!

Really excited about this. Shifting away from mental illness and trauma, both of which have their obvious problematic pitfalls, is something I could see really opening up what a character looks like and goes through after having things go wrong in interesting new ways.

Big spread on Facilitator and Player Principles. I think this is all very solid advice as a one-time or just-before-play read, but it's definitely too much for quick reference. That said, I always love reminding folks that we "play to find out what happens."

I may be off the mark but these two bullets make me think Goblin Archives is a Friends at the Table listener. Both of these make me immediately think of Austin's openings on there (which is a very good thing, for me).

Very straightforward stats. I like the HP distinction here and how it seems to refill between events/encounters and when drained is when you see actual damage occur. More inventory structure than I expected (I like that tho!) Cool to see character AND party questions here.

I really loved the Backgrounds and character options in The Bureau, a Control-inspired megadungeon-like module for this system I did a read-through of about a month or so ago. Excited to see more of that here. Also, I really need to play as a Very Online character.

Nice open character creation. I enjoy these types of questions: why do you believe there's something weird going on? What ideology guides you? What are your connections in the world, important relationships, etc.? Those create way more juicy bits than stats alone can provide.

I first encountered these kinds of character bonds in Fate years ago, but it's been a go-to house rule of mine during Session 0/1 for anything my group is planning to do longer than one-shot play for. Even in a single session, it can add a lot. Cool to see it here.

It's a d20 roll-under system (no modifiers, yay). Adding fatigue to inventory slots is a great way to make a mechanic out of that. Also, associates were unexpected! Shows this game could be more than just 3-4 bumbling normies going into the unknown (which is what I envisioned).

Combat is fairly straightforward (in a good way). No rolls to hit, it's just damage that is varied. Props to not using Advantage/Disadvantage as a game term like everyone else. Again, the Detachments make me think this game could have some wild situations come up!

Open-ended spell casting here (reminds me most recently of Primal Quest). They come and go day to day which is interesting, potentially changing entirely. I like the failure being equal to the desired effect. Want to kill someone with a spell? Be prepared to die if things go bad.

Okay, these relics are extremely cool. A blade that does MIND DAMAGE and requires recharging by feeding it memories? Good stuff.

Fallout is really interesting. Take enough DMG to go through your HP and it ticks away your Strength until you die (or take crit DMG). Fallout is the same but wears at your Control. Gaining Fallout makes you odder/more open to the true nature of things, but makes you heartier.

This is a good approach bc it means leaning into the things most games gate behind "sanity" here makes you more able to cope with the weird in the future. Feels like a path to more interesting stories (rather than the CoC-style "you are in a sanitarium now" character ending).

Remainder of the book is a small bestiary with monster creation guidelines, spark tables and a lean but comprehensive mystery creation guide along with a sample mystery. The loose framework, a steady clock ratcheting tension, and a focus on lots of clues feels like good guidance.

Having a mystery take only 6 pages feels much more approachable than the very traditional heavy-prep and lots-of-writing mysteries of something like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. I homebrewed a lot of CoC, and the prep work there can be pretty huge. This feels nice tho.

Overall thoughts: the book is a very lean and focused take on creating horror that doesn't get bogged down in the other ttrpg pitfalls of the genre while also having nice mechanics for associates, large scale encounters, etc. so there's room for a lot of types of stories here.

I'll definitely be trying to knock out a mystery for this as part of the jam. I've got a lot of weirdness to get out of my system and this seems like an easy, streamlined way to do it. Also, excited to play The Bureau and The Mall.

You can pick up the most recent addition of Liminal Horror in print via Space Penguin Ink. You can also find it on Itch. The rules and additional content also available entirely for free on Goblin Archives github.

Also, I wrote an adventure for this system last year: Tunnels in White.

Old money siphoning new money from every corner of your city. An aging mansion, quiet and worn. An old corporation shifting its gaze from development to development, always hungry, always growing.

A warehouse bearing the name Singleton Solutions, small and unassuming in one of a hundred industrial parks like any other, takes in truckload after truckload but never sends anything out. It’s the same for the people. Sometimes, they arrive in towncars, other times in shuttle vans. None come out. Ever.

What you know is something strange is going on inside that warehouse and you are determined to discover what it is. What you cannot know is where and how far the mystery may take you.

You can grab a print or digital copy HERE. It's also available via Itch.

Lastly if you like seeing my thoughts on games and how I make stuff for them, here's my monthly newsletter (which now has a free TTRPG thing to take to your table each month): https://meatcastle.substack.com

[rookthorne]

No Way Out | ʙᴜᴄᴋʏ ʙᴀʀɴᴇꜱ

Pairing; TFAWS!Bucky Barnes x F!Agent!Reader Word Count; 1.1k Warnings; hurt/no comfort, major character death, swearing, petnames A/N; ...I'm sorry. I listened to Last Glimmer while writing this and made it even more angsty than I planned.

WHUMPTOBER MASTERLIST

Fate was cruel. Life, even more so. The pain was excruciating, well past and beyond endurance. It was just a shame there was little comfort you could give from the other side of Death’s veil.

Sam had said that this mission was a simple recon - infiltrate the base, gather all the information you possibly could, and get out. 

Foolishly, you believed him, and let your guard down. You were with Bucky, you were safe, nothing could get to you, and nothing would hurt you.  

The sound of Bucky punching through locks on doors and cabinets to rifle through the contents within was jarring, but you kept focus. You were rooting through their computer system and making copies of everything when the alarm blared and rattled your bones. The pitch was shrill, and it grated against your eardrums worse than a bag of yowling cats. 

“Move!” Bucky ordered and you complied without a second thought. The device with the copies came free from its slot with no resistance, and the two of you tore down the hallway where red lights bounced off the walls and burned against your retinas. There was a suspicious looking mist gathering over the concrete floor in waves, and the sight made your stomach turn. What kind of chemical was laced amongst that smoke?

You could hear Sam yelling over the comms to “fucking move!” when Redwing came into view. “Follow him!” Sam shouted and you grabbed hold of Bucky’s hand - be damned if the two of you became separated in this chaos. 

The piercing cry of the alarm didn’t fade as you ran through the mazes of corridors - running from a threat neither of you could see. Terror wove it’s way through every fibre of your body and your heart froze over with ice when a long corridor came into sight. 

The exit. 

It was right there. 

Why was it so easy?

“C’mon!” Bucky shouted and pulled you along, his pace brutal and unforgiving on your quickly tiring muscles. “We’re almost there!”

He didn’t see it in haste to move - the slight gap in the wall that was widening with every stride the two of you took towards the exit. “Bucky! Look out!” You cried, but it was too late. 

An earth shattering boom echoed through the walls and you screamed when you stumbled. It was like your body had given up on the idea of escape all together, and it didn’t want to fight. 

Bucky’s hand slipped from yours and you looked up, eyes wide with fear only to see where he should have been standing, there was a steel wall. An unbreachable span of metal that separated you from escape and Bucky was on the other side. “NO!”

“I’m alright!” You yelled, suppressing the urge to cough against the tightening in your throat. It was like being choked by an unseen hand. 

What the fuck was in that smoke?

The dull pounding of Bucky’s fist against the metal could be heard over the screeching alarm and you got to your feet sluggishly, all fight drained from your body. 

“Can you see anything?” Bucky cried, his fist still slamming against the metal in an effort to blow it to hell. “I can’t-” A sudden yell of frustration broke off his rant and you leant unsteadily against the door. “I can’t fucking get through!”

The smoke was rising in a tidal wave the longer that door sealed away the exit and you couldn’t help but let fear win out against your training. 

It was sealed tight, and there was no release mechanism this side of the damned door. There was a rising tide of an unknown gas circling your feet and burning your lungs. Going back the way you came was not an option, your body was giving in to whatever the gas was and it felt like a tremendous effort to even remain on your feet. 

There was no way out. 

Bucky could not save you this time. 

This was it. 

The realisation turned your whole body to ice. Your heart beat a tattoo against your ribs, fighting valiantly against the restraint of bone. 

“Please!” You heard Bucky yell and you slumped, your knees hitting the floor with a dull thud that he no doubt could hear. “Answer me!”

“I’m here, Buck,” your voice sounded nothing like you. It was resigned, weak, defeated. A coughing fit wracked your already seizing lungs.

“What’s happening?” Sam demanded over the comms and Bucky cut in before you could even open your mouth to answer through gasps for air.

“She’s stuck! There’s some sort of gas coming from the door and I can’t get the damn thing open!”

The alarm ceased and all you could hear was Bucky and Sam arguing over the comms and the sound of your shallow breathing. It was cruel, going out this way. Weak and unable to fight back.

A second set of footsteps on the other side of the door told you Sam had arrived, the hum of his wings and whirring of Redwing a comfort to you - Bucky wasn’t alone now. 

“Boys,” you tried around another coughing fit and they fell silent. Your lungs were constricting and it was hard to breathe. “Go, before you-”

“Don’t you dare,” Bucky interrupted loudly before you could finish. “Don’t you fucking dare do that.”

“Sam,” you started before another violent cough wracked your lungs. “I need you to take care of him, he needs you.”

A beat of silence followed your request and then Sam spoke. “You got it, sweetheart.”

Bucky screamed with rage and pounded against the door again - you could hear Sam trying to talk to him and pull him back but it was futile. An enraged super soldier was no easy feat to convince. 

“No, Sam!” A thud against the door shook your back and you closed your eyes against the sudden onset of sleepiness. “I can’t leave her- no! Get the fuck off me!”

“Bucky, my love,” you managed quietly and it fell silent. The scuff of two pairs of feet still with apprehension. “I need you to go, I need you to be okay.”

The smoke was rising further up the walls and up your slumped figure, time was running out. 

“Can you do that for me, Bucky?”

A loud sob echoed through the door and it tore your heart in half. 

You didn’t want to leave him. 

“I can’t lose you, too, please,” Bucky begged and you allowed a tear to slip past your waterline, the weight of it on your cheek grounding you. 

“I love you, Bucky,” you promised, your voice as firm as you could manage against the tide of black in your vision. The beating of your heart had slowed and you felt like you could float. “I always have, and I always will.”

The current of darkness swept you away before you could hear Bucky scream from the pain of losing you. 

Graphics & Header made by yours truly.

Masterlist | Library | AO3 | Wattpad

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

Tales from the Aether a Top Down View

The goals of this ttrpg system is simple:

- Allow players the freedom to build a character from the ground up and feel as their character develops over time into something wholly unique.

- Give players a sense of urgency during combat encounters.

- Expand spells and magic so magic feels like a diagetic part of the world and players using magic are both unburdened by spell slots and feel the weight of the power they wield.

- Merge story telling and role play with the traditional sword and sorcery adventure narrative.

Every aspect of this system revolves around player choice and customization. No two players can make the same character even if they both choose the same ancestry, background, and archetype. The most important aspect of character creation are Skills and their Feats. Archetypes are guidelines players can use to help select beginning skills and feats but they need not be taken as gospel. When a player is creating their character, regardless of level, they have over 30 Skills to choose from and each skill has Feats that grant the players unique abilities and traits. Skill Feats are the bedrock of your character and allow players to craft a unique role play styles and combat styles.

Creating a sense of urgency during combat was one of my main goals with this system and thus I developed the Stamina and Arcana systems. All players have Stamina while only magic users have Arcana, both are resources that replenish over time. Players are not limited to a set number of attacks on their turn but can attack as much as their little hearts desire - if they have the Stamina to spend. Every attack costs Stamina and certain weapons require more Stamina to wield. Spells work similarly as in they cost Arcana to cast or maintain but every individual spell has a casting time so the maximum number of spells you could theoretically cast on your turn is three - Main action, Minor action, and Reaction. If you run out of either of these resources, you are penalized. Thus, the goal of combat is to end the encounter as quickly as possible as you are literally on ticking clock.

Magic in this system is designed to make the player feel powerful. Outside of combat, players can cast their spells as much as they want and choosing to use utility spells over battle spells is a non issue. Instead, those who wield magic must be incredibly conscious of their Arcana during battle as there are many avenues that their enemies could drain this resource - causing them to risk Possession. See, characters who use magic do not do so naturally but have made a bridge between their minds and the Aether, a world between worlds and the source of all creation. If a character that uses magic runs out of Arcana, there is a small chance a spirit from the Aether could cross this bridge and gain free reign of the character's mind and body through possession.

Integrating role play into the standard elements of fantasy ttrpgs like exploration and dungeon crawling and treasure hunting was a must. Through avenues such as Disabilities, Bloodlines and Curses, Backstory, Factions, Stress, Reputation, Your Moment and Pursuits, I have provided both GM's and players ample tools to weave their story into every action they take. There is no real divide between combat and social encounters as both have equally high stakes and can be just as deadly - or rewarding.

This is a peak at some design elements of my TTRGP Tales from the Aether. This is not dnd. If you think some of these ideas are interesting, check out my Masterpost linked here and follow for more updates :D

[kaywavy]

transforming soffits reorganizing keys formalizing immersion joints justifying kick extractors advising aggregates managing elbows recasting connectors achieving aluminum trowels officiating disks exhibiting absolute spigots progressing coil hydrants jerry-building reflectors informing casters inventing rubber hoists performing wrenches judging chalk adapters upgrading ignition paths

regrowing flashing recommending ratchets approving barriers sweeping impact fillers sewing mirrors detailing collectors enforcing measures distributing systems presenting plugs interwinding registers piloting ash diffusers gathering cranks supplying eave pockets undertaking scroll stops accelerating straps designing fittings protecting diamond boilers logging downspouts correlating shingles uniting mallets qualifying electrostatic lifts sharing clamps obtaining circular fluids ranking foundation gauges sensing miter brackets originating space networks translating drills regulating guards selecting gable padding utilizing pellet dowels reconciling artifacts altering pulleys shedding space filters determining vents representing mortar remaking flash rakers supporting funnels typecasting rotary chocks expressing junctures resetting auxiliary vises professing strip treads inlaying matter trowels questioning drivers forming edge fittings sketching blanks overshooting spark breakers rewriting controls playing tunnels inventorying buttons enduring joint handles effecting ratchet bibbs unwinding couplings forsaking vapor conduits defining sockets calculating heaters raising grids administering tiles measuring resources installing ignition remotes extracting corners manufacturing ventilators delegating consoles treating mounting stones enacting jig deflectors intensifying alleys improvising cargo pinpointing bobs prescribing arc masonry structuring metal chucks symbolizing lathes activating plumb kits adapting coatings fixing channels expediting cordage planning compressors enlisting hangers restructuring keyhole augers shearing ridge hardware collecting reciprocating bolts maintaining corrugated dimmers whetting hole collars conducting mandrels comparing assets compiling sealants completing paths composing equivocation wheels computing dampers conceiving electrostatic treatment ordering cotter grates organizing ties orienting ladders exceeding materials targeting thermocouples demonstrating emery stock expanding latch bases training wardrobe adhesives overcomming[sic] fasteners streamlining storm anchors navigating springs perfecting turnbuckles verifying gate pegs arbitrating arithmetic lifts negotiating outlets normalizing strips building surface foggers checking key torches knitting grinders mowing planers offsetting stencils acquiring bulbs adopting rivets observing avenues ascertaining coaxial grommets slinging wing winches instituting circuit generators instructing wicks integrating pry shutters interpreting immersion lumber clarifying coils classifying wood bits closing cogs cataloging matter strips charting holders conceptualizing push terminals stimulating supports overthrowing shaft spacers quick-freezing connectors unbinding ground hooks analyzing eyes anticipating gateways controlling proposition rollers converting power angles coordinating staples correcting benders counseling joist gaskets recording gutter pipes recruiting drains rehabilitating rafter tubes reinforcing washers reporting guard valves naming freize sprues nominating rings noting straps doubling nailers drafting circuit hoses dramatizing flanges splitting framing compounds refitting stems interweaving patch unions placing sillcocks sorting slot threads securing mode cutters diverting catharsis plates procuring load thresholds transferring syllogism twine directing switch nuts referring time spools diagnosing knobs discovering locks dispensing hinges displaying hasps resending arc binders retreading grooves retrofitting aesthetics portals seeking stocks shrinking wormholes assembling blocks assessing divers attaining lug boxes auditing nescience passages conserving strikes constructing braces contracting saw catches serving installation irons recognizing fluxes consolidating fuse calipers mapping shims reviewing chop groovers scheduling lag drives simplifying hoists engineering levels enhancing tack hollows establishing finishing blocks

[mymiraclebox]

Updated Alpha Powers!

So I decided to drop Purification and Corruption from being one of the Alphas' powers (they will still have this ability, but it won't be one of their three main powers). I wanted them to have three unique abilities though, so I added/revamped what I had for them. This has already been updated on their bios, but I'm also adding it to this post if anyone's interested in seeing it all in one place. :) Thank you to @silverslate221 for helping me with these, especially with Catalyze and Ubiquitous, along with the updated versions of Nascence and Abyss!

As for what's happening to Purification and Corruption, they will be like the Animal Traits with it just being something Alpha Miraculouses can do without it taking up a power slot. Actually all Miraculouses will have some form of energy manipulation, but I'm still working on developing that system.

---

Panda of Life

Esse – Summons a white orb of Life energy, which can be given to another. This can bring youthfulness and save those who are dying or have just passed away.

Nascence – One is able to create a small spiritual being, many of which can inhabit various items to interact with the physical world.

Resurrection – A mist of white light spreads across an area, restoring Life and raising those who have passed to all it touches, able to go back generations if one so wishes.

Crow of Death

Wither – The user can charge their weapon with red energy, which will begin draining life from all it touches. This will cause rapid aging, and eventually Death.

Necro – One gains control over anything that has been touched by Death, able to summon things such as skeletons to do their bidding.

Reap – A wave of bright red light is released, which instantly kills all that it touches, leaving no mark upon them. This can bind a soul to the place where they fell.

Ladybug of Creation

Lucky Charm – One summons a red energy that can be molded into any item they wish. One can either fully call these items into reality as a permanent Creation, or channel the energy to make something else.

Fortuitous – One is able to instantly Create a solution from their surroundings to what problems they face.

Miraculous Ladybug – A cloud of ladybug constructs swarm the area, recreating anything they touch into a new and prime state. When interacting with living things these ladybugs encourage healing and growth.

Black Cat of Destruction

Cataclysm – Destructive energy is summoned around one's hand. This can Destroy any physical objects, and with experience it can even Destroy more abstract forces.

Catalyze – Imbues a target with a spark of Destruction, slowly Destroying components in their surroundings that causes things to break down and go wrong around them. 

Catastrophe – One summons a dense black fog full of crackling green energy, from which a natural disaster is released.

Wolf of Order

Sequence – The user instantly creates Order within anything they touch, resulting in things becoming straight and organized, or restoring cracks and damage.

Compulsion – One is compelled to act on an urge to ensure Order and structure, descending into an obsession the longer this effect remains active.

Midnight Howl – Silver light encloses an area, securing the state it is in, preventing change or disorder. Any damage inflicted will instantly be restored to the state it was in when the power was summoned.

Platypus of Chaos

Paradox - A random, unexplainable event takes place.

Entropy – Chaotic energy is shot out from a firework. Whoever is hit by the light will have their perspective on reality become incomprehensible the longer they are under the effect.

Pandemonium – A blast of strobing light is released in all directions, consuming everything into a state of Chaos. It is impossible to note all that can happen, but logic and physics will not apply.

Firefly of Space

Kinesis – Lets one manipulate an item's place within Space, able to move things about as if with mere thought.

Ubiquitous – The holder gains the ability to appear in multiple places at once, their singular presence inhabiting many locations at the same time.

Expanse – This manipulation of Space allows a location to be stretched out far away, or to be a step away; or an object can be made to take up more or less Space, the effects being fluid and instant.

Raccoon of Void

Stifle – Stifle rids the area of a specific component for a short period of time. This can be anything from an idea, to sound, light, air, or even emotion.

Abyss – A Void appears beneath the feet of a target, which removes them from this plane of reality. They end up in true emptiness: no sound, no solid ground, nothing until they are freed from it.

Desolate – A heavy fog of nothingness overtakes the area, permanently removing it from existence. No sign of something can be found after Desolate strikes, as if it was never there.

[squirrelpatties]

Okay, ignoring the incest, the question of Trolls World Taxonomy is pretty interesting (and not something I'm exactly qualified to get into lmao). You've got Trolls, Bergens, Vaycaytioners, Mount Rageons, and the variety of critters. And the Party Crashers as a potential result of Bergen/Troll relations based on what's known about them.

Clearly, we can't judge the species of this world by the taxonomies we know; Trolls have hair and maybe fur like mammals, and likely have a "warm-blooded" metabolism based on how much energy they're able to expend singing and dancing all the time (which then begs the question of how much they must eat relative to their body weight to maintain that energy, but it's possible there's some degree of music-based magic involved somewhere. Or the foods they normally eat are incredibly calorie-dense, like Bugsnax), but they also display non-mammalian traits as well—the most obvious one being eggs, and the most important one (in the movies at least, discounting Delta Dawn) being the lack of mammaries.

Of course, it's not impossible for non-mammalian species to have fur; Trolls could be some form of arthropod, like the fluffy moths of our world. But I think the true answer is, as stated earlier, far stranger, and outside the normal bounds of the taxonomic systems we apply to Earth animals. Take, for example, the Trolls-as-drugs metaphor present in the first and third movies. Yes, the Trolls being eaten and Floyd being drained serve as a metaphor for material consumption and talent being taken advantage of respectively, but from a literal standpoint? Trolls have a recorded emotional effect when consumed and their "talent" can be drained as an essence that works as a performance booster. In-universe, Trolls are drugs.

And then things are complicated further when we remember that Trolls have an inherent connection to music. It's written in their very bones and something they cannot be rid of, and different subspecies emerged based upon differing genres of music. Yes, there were the strings, but the ending of the second movie involved no making of new strings—and, in the history Peppy described (though we must take that account with several pinches of salt due to the inherent biases in his explanation; though it was a cute detail for the scrap-Pop Troll to be the one holding the harp when Peppy said "Trolls grew intolerant of each other's music" in the same way that the Pop Trolls having that original harp was a cute detail alluding to the truth purported by the Funk Trolls and Barb), the strings were described to have been made by the ancestors when they were inspired by the Original Sound. So it's very likely that the strings, for all the power they held, were merely instruments themselves, and that the power of music was inherent to Trolls from the beginning regardless of the strings' existence. But that's entirely speculation, as canon has no real indication towards the truth.

Still, the way that music is so inherent to Trolls can be considered an integral trait of the species; and yes, I am counting all Trolls as the same species. While we haven't seen any intergenre couples in canon, with the way that music develops, evolves, and exists in a variety of ways makes it near impossible to imagine that the different genres would be unable to mix. As for how deeply music is written into a Troll's very being, while it's true that many musical numbers seen in the movies and show are likely rehearsed, there are still plenty more large coordinated groups singing and dancing in tandem with no clear rehearsal or even discussion beforehand. While calling it a sort of "hiveminding" ability feels a bit too far, it's easy to surmise that, due to their inherent nature as creatures of Music first and foremost, it is incredibly easy for Trolls to join in on song and dance they've never heard before and naturally slot into place.

Perhaps it is disingenuous to compare Trolls to Earth animals at all; perhaps the more apt comparison would be to fungi, which are neither flesh nor cellulose and follow their own set of rules. But even then, fungi don't lay eggs, so we are once again brought back to the conclusion that Trolls cannot be defined by the mundane taxonomies of our world. While less is known about the other species (Bergen, Vaycaytioner, Mount Rageon, Critters), it can be assumed the same applies to them. Thus, an entirely new taxonomy would have to be created to apply to these creatures, which is what makes thinking about it so fun! One would have to come up with theories and worldbuilding on the histories and prehistories of the Trolls' world, using what information canon gives us and extrapolating off of that, all while using real world cladistics, taxonomy, and ecology as a basis with which to shape the barest bones of the Trolls' world taxonomy!

*nods dumbly* Yeah yeah 😃 <- (spaced out mid-way through that)

[quirkwizard]

Could Hakari's Domain Expansion work as a quirk?

I do think that the general concept of the idea could work, the user having some luck based jackpot system for the affect to take place, though with another affect.

I see it working as a Transformation type Quirk allows the user to make a series of three rolls of symbols on their chest on their chest, similar to that of a slot machine. When the user hits their chest, they can roll the slots, having six possible symbols on them. If the user gets three of these in a row, they will take on an empowered form. This can improve their strength, speed, durability, healing, intelligence, and senses depending the symbols they get. These all offer drastic increases in power, such as the strength one being capable of punching through concrete and the healing one growing back limbs. The forms will last up of five minutes or the user can choose to leave the form by hitting their chest again. The user can influence this to some degree by flexing their chest. This gives the user some good variety, able to swap between their forms as they see fit. If nothing else, it can be fun to play the slots when the user is board. Though the usage of this Quirk is heavily based around luck, making it unreliable and difficult to work with at times. Applying this Quirk does eat away at the user's stamina bit by bit, potentially draining them if they try to push it. A possible name for the Quirk could be "Jackpot".

[utilitycaster]

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the importance that mechanics and external factors have in understanding actual play, but how it's also really important to understand that the instant one leaves actual play as a medium, even if you are adapting the same story, you need to leave that behind.

I think the easiest example would be Scanlan's 9th level Counterspell. In the context of D&D 5e, we understand the following simply from the word "Nine": it is his highest spell slot; he only has one per day; and he has just expended an incredibly valuable and powerful resource that means he cannot use any spells that require it.

In an eventual adaptation, however, this is meaningless. That doesn't mean you can't depict something with a similar emotional weight and meaning; it's just that it will need to be portrayed differently (perhaps as an expendable scroll). The idea of "this is both very necessary to do and very powerful, and also is an immense trade-off" is what's important but the mechanics of it will necessarily fall away when you're no longer bound by mechanics. If you're adapting actual play or writing fic about it? You do need to have some degree of treating magic as a limited resource per day and staying true to broad abilities, but the idea of spell slots is "how can we provide limits to this storytelling system so that it is also a fun game" and the idea is that if you are looking at the story, and not the game, no one is saying "I have no more spell slots"; they're saying "I'm drained and need to rest before I can do more magic other than the most basic things."

(Note - this is fine in-game though. Like, yeah, ideally, no one would shout INSIGHT CHECK and would instead bring it up narratively but also...this is a dumb hill to die on, and I will die on a lot of hills. It is in fact fine while playing the game to acknowledge that you have spell slots and would like to make an investigation check instead of saying "I can do...some magic but not a lot, and I look more closely at the carvings on the wall.")

I think what also trips people up is that DMs in combat are limited by the rules of combat, but outside of combat, they really aren't. To give an example here, Ludinus casts a spell on Kadija that isn't clearly Feeblemind - she clearly has been reverted to the mindset of a young child or similar, but mechanically doesn't act as though she is INT 1, CHA 1. It has similar vibes but isn't quite the same.

This is totally fine and only the most stick-up-their ass pedant would fuss about it. It's a homebrew spell. It's a magical effect for a monster stat block. It is completely okay that it's not exactly a match for a spell that exists. The point is that it fits the broad logic of how magical effects work in the world (a targeted save that she fails; curable) and furthers the story. (Another example is Caleb's backstory re: Vergesson, or Veth being turned into a goblin; ultimately, it doesn't matter exactly what happened as long as we get the gist, because they both fit into, for lack of a better term, the vibe of the magic).

One last related thing is that metagaming in the sense of like, actively trying to twist the scenario to your advantage based on information you as a player know and your character would not is bad (eg: if you know a certain monster is vulnerable to a certain damage type but your character has never encountered it, and you use something extremely atypical for you to leverage this? not great); but I also think fear of metagaming kind of goes too far at times, and stepping back and remembering this is a narrative and not just a rule set helps here. To give an example here: Fearne and FCG hadn't met Caleb and Beau, but as eventually was actually discussed at the table, they still do know that Ludinus and Otohan = bad guys and so it's valid to say "hmmm, freeing their prisoners is like, not a bad idea if only for the chaos." Your character might not know the characters in-game, and they certainly don't know them out of game, but I think a lot of people overcorrect and you don't need to.

This is tbh another case in which I would recommend D&D Court from NADDPod, because they do handle a lot of metagaming-related cases where people are getting far too obsessive. The fact is there is a lot of metagaming happening anyway. If your players seem upset you stop even if the characters wouldn't likely be upset. The famous Sam Smorkel joke works specifically because, on some level, no normal person would speak to Sam Smorkel first, and your players are doing it because they have medium awareness. Metagaming is constant, perfect immersion is rare, and keep an eye out for it but usually metagaming that does cross the line is pretty egregious and the rest is overly concerned.

[yungvenuz]

Game of the Year List 2023

Honorable Mentions: Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia: I love the oddball mashup of shmup and dungeon crawler mechanics, but I ended up losing interest before the end of the game. In Stars and Time: Still playing this game. I like it so far, but I didn't want to rush it through to get it on this list. It'll go on next year's list if I like it enough. Stuffo the Puzzle Bot: Really great soundtrack. Still on regular rotation.

10. Super Snail (IOS and Android)

This is a difficult inclusion. Super Snail is an Evil game. It's the most monetized game I've ever played. Every screen you can visit can trigger a special offer for a pile of goodies you don't need that you can buy with real money. It's a mobile gacha game, through and through, designed to eat up time and attention and offer back a distant illusion of progress that you could surely expedite, if you were just willing to kick in ten bucks for one of its dozens of customized season passes…. So, why is this game on this list?

Developer QCPlay was already on my radar from previous release Gumball and Dungeons, a similarly high effort mobile game (amusingly originally intended as a Dragon Quest game, until they failed to secure the license and were forced to sand all the iconic teardrops off their slimes and call them gumballs instead). Despite their willingness to indulge in all the awful trends of mobile game markets, these are real, proper game designers, who have buried a real, actual game under all of Super Snail's idle timers and base management bullshit.

Super Snail is constantly shifting, adding new layers of complexity and shaking up existing mechanics. It's the only gacha game I'm aware of in which your gacha machine can be stolen from you temporarily if you use it too much, forcing you to wait on spending tickets until the thief decides its rates are too shit to bother with and returns it to you. There's a dating sim mechanic in which various characters met in your travels (male, female, or both) will find out about your secret base and decide to mooch off you, which is some of the funniest writing in the game.

On that note, the writing is weirdly good for a game that's approximately 80% random pop culture references. The eight demon lords you've been tasked with defeating by the mysterious god "Earth's Will" all have detailed and consistent backstories. There are a few honest-to-god effective twists in the plot, and a lingering question about how shady the god you've signed your life to actually is.

A predatory mobile game shouldn't deserve one minute of my attention, let alone one of the coveted slots on my illustrious top ten list, but Super Snail spits in the face of all that, and god. I can't stop thinking about it, about how many interesting game design lessons are nestled within its strange and evil exterior. So, by compromise, it's grudgingly earned my #10. Just, for god's sake, if any of this backhanded review piques your interest, set a budget for yourself and don't exceed it for any reason.

9. BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is Your Heart (Steam)

BOSSGAME is an action rpg about two dirtbag lesbians, Sophie and Anna, trying to earn rent money by taking random mercenary work in the big city. The story is low pressure fun, with a little melodrama mixed in to spice things up. The plot is needs-suiting, even maybe good, but the reason this game is on the list is the gameplay.

BOSSGAME is really, really fun to play. It uses a combat system reminiscent of the Mario and Luigi rpgs in which both party members are controlled simultaneously. Enemies telegraph attacks that need to be blocked using the left or right side of the gamepad based on character, draining stamina. Attacking also drains stamina, so a careful balance of offense and defense needs to be maintained to survive. Most interestingly, there's no turns: enemies repeat attack patterns usually without waiting for a counterattack, so combat becomes a brain-bending routine of multitasking, with one character needing to block attacks while the other sneaks in some damage. A combo system encourages keeping up constant pressure, with the reward being increased progress toward a super attack that can briefly stun bosses and allow some easy hits before returning to defensive play. The end result is fast paced, engaging, and totally unique combat that was fun to learn for each of the dozens of boss fights in the game.

I'm glad this game ended up being good enough to recommend here, not just because I, too, am lesbian, but because I love designers that are willing to take a chance on unique control schemes. Part of the fun of playing BOSSGAME was getting to learn how to play without being able to rely on any of the muscle memory I've accrued over years of playing other action games. I only wish it weren't so short. Of all the games on this list, this is the one I would most want to see expanded into a full 40-60 hour RPG epic.

8. Slay the Princess (Steam)

A Myers-Briggs test for fetishes. Keep that in mind whenever anybody who tries to talk to you about their favorite "route". Great writing though

7. EDF 5 (Steam)

My official Multiplayer Game Experience of the Year. The EDF (EDF! EDF! EDF!) series is an alien invasion resistance simulator that exists somewhere between Dynasty Warriors and Monster Hunter in gameplay. I've known about the series for a long time, and I had assumed it was the kind of loud dumb fun that makes for punchy clips but wears out its welcome quickly. To be clear, it definitely is loud, and dumb, and fun, but it also has significantly more mechanical depth and complexity than I expected, which kept it fresh and engaging for as long as I played it.

Mechanics like building destruction and corpse hitboxes looks like they're just they're there for spectacle at first, but as levels progress and more and more aggressive enemy types are introduced, these seemingly incidental details take on more and more importance as you need to manage cover and enemy sight lines more effectively. This is the game's most potent tool, I think: everything that makes it great as a ridiculous carnage sandbox has been meticulously designed to also work in the higher difficulty levels to deliver a genuinely tense and highly mobile shooter.

6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayers (Steam)

A boomer shooter in the same canon as Hypnospace Outlaw, partially developed by troubled teen ZANE_ROCKS_14 and polished up for release 22 years later. For an elaborate shitpost, it's very well made, but what most interests me about it is its contradictory nature. Outwardly, it's completely juvenile and silly about everything it does, filled with poop jokes and mouthy rats and evil stepdads. Underneath that, there's the deep melancholy of a 36 year old desperately trying to relive the last time in his life that he felt cool.

all the levels in the game faithfully recreate scenes of Zane's Idaho childhood, from ritzy suburban neighborhoods to car parks to the local fair, but they're all just a little bit too eerily empty for the settings they're trying to evoke. The protagonist's sincere love for his mother completely clashes with the badass attitude he brings to every other scene. Zane put his all into voice acting the protagonist's lines, while every other character sounds like they're reciting lines into their phone in a bathroom. The end result is a masterpiece in immersive game design, meticulously arranged to feel like it came from a very specific time and place in a fictional alternate universe. It's so effective that even the parts that don't work can be argued as a deliberate part of the overall period piece, like the confusingly short penultimate level or unnecessarily annoying final boss.

5. Cobalt Core (Steam)

A card battler built around spaceship combat. It should be immediately apparent to anybody who's played a lot of Slay-The-Spire-likes that Cobalt Core is on the easier side, but that's a deliberate choice here, in an effort to create an engaging narrative experience rather than a perfectly tuned progression treadmill. While Inscryption (another narrative card battler) managed its story by bringing the player away from the cards for cutscenes or escape room sequences, Cobalt Core delivers everything within its roguelike framework, even going as far as coming up with a time loop justification for why the player is repeating runs to progress the story.

In that regard it compares more closely to Hades than other card battlers, and I also think that's a good comparison because I really like the characters and character interactions in Cobalt Core. Each round starts with the selection of three of the (after finishing a short period of unlocks) 7 crewmates available to play with, and every combination of characters has interesting discussions and interactions between them. Characters also have lines to acknowledge specific artifacts, cards, or game states (like big damage or status effects) that offers a level of reactivity to make each run that much more unique. Also like Hades, there's a concrete ending sequence. Backstory for each crewmate is delivered piecemeal throughout the game, and while there aren't any earthshattering twists or revelations, the ending does a good job of tying everything together for a proper sendoff.

Shoutout to Riggs. Best possum in the galaxy.

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

4. Going Down (2014 Doom wad) (Doomworld File Depot)

This year, I played MyHouse.wad. More and more people were talking about it, and I wanted to give it a try myself before someone randomly spoiled it for me. I didn't end up caring for it much! It did some interesting things, and it was definitely well made, but I'm not that interested in the creepypasta style it was going for.

It did pique my interest in the rich ecosystem of Doom modding that's been quietly trucking along for 30 years before myhouse ever released, though. A friend recommended Going Down, which I found to be terrific, and then I spent the rest of the year playing random wads (level packs) whenever I didn't have anything else to do. Doom has become invaluable to me as a podcast game, especially as I've only just been able to extract myself from Tactical Nexus's cunning grasp this year.

So, without further ado: The Official Doom Wads of the Year Minilist:

10 Struggle: Antaresian Legacy - Most of the levels in this wad focus on low-pressure exploration, but my favorites were the wide-open chaotic battles. I especially like the capstone levels of the first two chapters (maps 11 and 20), which both feature massive arenas with hundreds of enemies active at once. 9 Ancient Aliens - A collab megawad with great aesthetic and theming. Level quality is inconsistent, which makes sense given how many authors were involved, but the best levels in the wad are excellent. 8 Dust Devil - A short campaign of two interconnected levels with a bunch of interesting custom content. The use of grenade launchers and shielded enemies was especially cool, and not something I expected the doom engine to be able to do. 7 Lullaby - A stylish single-map wad in a decidedly undoomlike blue dreamland. There's only five or so major setpiece encounters, but they're all very memorable. 6 Doom 2 - I love how experimental the design in Doom 2 is, especially given that the entire genre of fps was brand new at this point in history. there's abstract levels, puzzle levels, diagetic cityscapes, and more. It's easy to see its influence in every fps to ever follow in its wake. 5 Overboard - A newer wad by the same author of Going Down with a great gimmick- the first five levels are followed by a set of hard mode remixes that use the same maps with more aggressive enemy arrangements. I particularly liked the last map of hard mode, which is identical to its normal mode variant except that it spawns all 500 enemies in the moment the level starts instead of deploying in piecemeal waves as it does in the original. 4 The Thing You Can't Defeat - An experimental remix of the first chapter of Doom 1. Very interesting premise and punchline. If you liked MyHouse.wad, I'd highly recommend checking it out. 3 Tarnsman's Projectile Hell - This is the first touhou game I've played, technically. Deviously difficult design with an emphasis on long distance hitscan enemies that would be extremely annoying in the hands of a level designer any less obviously talented than Tarnsman. 2 Unloved - An ambitious continuous campaign that takes place in a Silent Hill-esque house with several portals to distorted nightmare realms. I like that small amounts of progress are made in each level at a time with frequent revisits to the main hub, and I love the dark atmosphere. Very creepy. Also insanely difficult. 1 Going Down - My favorite by a long shot. The amount of variety in level and encounter design is incredible on its own, but I particularly like the care that went into giving each level a unique identity that still makes sense in the context of the wad's premise (taking an elevator floor by floor down into the depths of hell). Every level is meticulously designed to use the entire space, usually multiple times as later encounters in each level usually reuse the same arenas with additional twists on the layout and enemy deployments.

3. Pizza Tower (Steam)

A fluid platformer heavily inspired by the Wario Land games. Its most notable design choice is the lack of fail state when exploring levels. There's no health bar, and falling into pits only resets the room, so there's no significant pressure until the timed escape sequence at the end of each level. That's not to say the game lacks challenge, though. Far from it- the challenge comes not from reaching the end of each room, but in doing so as efficiently as possible. Pizza Tower's principle antagonist is the 5 second combo timer in the top right, forcing a constant stream of action. Every level has just enough stuff in each room to allow a single combo to be carried from start to level finish, which confers the coveted P Rank medal on level completion.

Full P Rank completion is what I spent three months obsessively chasing at the start of this year. Movement in Pizza Tower is so fluid, and so satisfying to learn how to fully utilize, that I couldn't resist going for it. I got so far into it that after finishing the game, I went back in immediately for an optional challenge that requires full P rank completion of the game in less than 4 hours, which required being able to clear each level with perfect consistency.

!Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWoTeTZL-C8

2. Beton Brutal (Steam)

The trailer for Beton Brutal immediately spoke to me. I've been a fan of persistent-state platforming games for ages, and it's a sorely underserved genre (mostly lurking in MMOs and player-made levels for games like Mario Maker). I like the emphasis on meditative upward progress, and I especially like the increasing pressure that builds as each subsequent jump risks losing more progress than the previous. Beton Brutal's developer was able to deliver this perfectly while also maintaining a consistent and interesting visual style (a stark contrast to the dreadful nft tie-in climbing game Only Up, which also released this year).

For weeks, I opened Beton Brutal after work and played for thirty minutes to an hour, usually seeing some small amount of new progress before inevitably taking a long fall and rage quitting for the day. I don't think I can call this the hardest game I've ever played, given that there's an entire community of people that can complete the entire climb in less than ten minutes, but I do think I'm uniquely poorly suited for games like this, given the extreme precision required. Still, that made it all the more satisfying to finally complete the game after almost exactly 20 hours of effort.

Three months later the DLC "Beton Bath", with another 500 meter tower with new obstacles, mechanics, and visual aesthetic (themed after public pool equipment, which honestly looks great decorating the tower), released. This dlc had mixed reviews, but it cemented this game as a whole as a favorite for me. The new tower has a very different design approach, with more focus on interpreting strange geometry, seeking out aggressive shortcuts, and taking giant leaps of faith. The last 100 meters particularly impressed me, with numerous falls onto trampolines 80 meters below to stride the entire tower in one jump and reach new ladders, before climbing just a few meters higher and repeating the process back to the opposite side.

trying to settle on which screenshot to include with the entry was agonizing, so I'm going to post a bunch more here. I love how this game looks.

Don't worry about the vertigo meter in the bottom left. It's probably nothing to worry about.

Void Stranger (Steam)

Void Stranger is a tile-based puzzle game featuring a magic wand that can pick tiles up and place them elsewhere. Help the noble handmaiden Gray delve into the 256th floor of the mysterious Void to fulfill her heart's desire, learning more about her past by peeking into her memories as she rests at checkpoints along the way.

…But that's not sufficient to describe it, really. The best way I can come up with to describe what Void Stranger actually is, is as a seemingly normal block-pushing puzzle game that's had an entire additional Myst-like adventure game layered over it. The puzzle game is real, and it can be engaged with honestly from start to finish, but the true fun of the game (and several of its many, many possible endings) comes from interpreting obscure clues in the lore and interface to dive deeper.

The more that's learned, the easier it is to navigate the underlying puzzle game. Almost every object in the game has hidden mechanics related to it, opening up easier routes through initially difficult puzzles or allowing the use of shortcuts to skip floors entirely. Once these tricks are mastered, only thirty or so of the game's 256 floors even need to be visited to complete a run, and most of them can be cleared in seconds.

That's a good thing, too, because there's a lot of travel to specific floors needed to find all the secrets in the game. This is a game that thrives on friction in its play experience, which means it's definitely not going to be a game for everybody. If clues regarding certain shortcuts or secrets are missed, it can add a lot of unnecessary work to completing the game. But I personally love that kind of obscurity in games, and I really appreciate that the developer System Erasure (who made the similarly excellent ZeroRanger) was willing to take a chance on a niche-of-a-niche genre that could really speak to its core demographic: me specifically.

I'm not going to talk much about the plot, because most of it is deeply tangled with the Void Stranger's deepest secrets. That said, I appreciate that every route through the game, even the ones that don't engage with all the secret hunting, have been given fully fledged stories. Even the bad ending has a fucking awesome finale, to the extent that I would recommend seeking it out before engaging with the rest of the game's content (if you get offered a fruit, go ahead and eat it!)

Void Stranger is good enough to make it onto my top ten list of games of all time. I've put it at #6, just behind Iji and just ahead of Full Bore. Everything about it is fucking awesome. Check it out!

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

[dicesmasher]

Stop using spell slots! Alternative mana system for 5e

Lately I’ve been really getting into the idea of The Elder Scrolls as a TTRPG - taking my players through the lands of Skyrim and beyond in that rich, iconic setting. Thankfully, a 5e mod for this has already been made, called ‘Delvebound’ or ‘Unofficial Elder Scrolls TRPG (UESTRPG)’. I will provide a link in this post. Now, I ultimately decided not to use all of the mod, as it has a lot of design decisions I really disagree with. All I took for my own game were the races (which I modified to suit my own design philosophy) and the magicka system, which replaces spell slots. This is what I want to focus on in this post.

The magicka system is simple. Instead of spell slots, your spellcaster has a pool of magic points (MP) similar to their HP. This is drained when they cast spells of 1st level or higher, and different spell levels cost varying amounts of MP, as explained in the chart here: 'https://wiki.uestrpg.com/wiki/Spellcasting_Rules'. Just like in Elder Scrolls games, and most other video games that include spellcasting. It’s smooth, simple and elegant, and flexible. Using this system, you can cast additional lower-level spells if you wanted to, or forgo some of your lower-level spells to cast additional higher-level spells. You won’t get stuck with a handful of 2nd-level spell slots you don’t know what to do with.

It’s also an easy 1-1 conversion from base 5e. Your MP pool is determined by adding up the MP value of all the spell slots you would have under the base 5e framework, so in theory you could cast as if you were using spell slots, and nothing would change. Within the same game, some players could opt to keep using spell slots while others use MP, and nobody would have more or less magic than the others. However, the spell-slot users would still miss out on the flexibility of MP, and through MP there are additional opportunities I would prefer all my players to be able to take advantage of.

But before I proceed, I know what you may be thinking. Without some additional rules, this system would be horribly overpowered at later levels. A level 17 wizard starts his day with 107 MP. A level 9 spell costs 13 MP. Thus, I could cast Meteor Swarm 8 times in a day if I wanted to, and while I would forgo my ability to cast many other spells, I might not need to! However, the designers of Delvebound did account for this, with one more simple rule: You cannot cast a spell of level 6 or higher more than once per day in that slot. This lines up well with base 5e, as higher level characters only have 1 slot for levels 6-9 anyway, until you’re level 20 giving you one more 6th level spell slot. This does mean a level 20 character using MP is technically worse off this way, missing out on an extra 6th level slot, but you could easily just say ‘okay you can cast a 6th level spell twice per day now’. Or do yourself a favour and don’t play at level 20.

So what are these extra opportunities? Drawing from The Elder Scrolls, potions of magicka! Be wise with these, as the limit on spells cast per day is the main balancing factor for spellcasters who already are known to outstrip their martial colleagues, but on occasion, giving out a nice blue potion which restores a small amount of MP would be a really cool consumable magic item for your spellcasters. You could even roll for the MP restored, like a healing potion, say 2d4+2 which already restores juice for at least two 1st-level spells. At lower levels, depending on how often you give them out, they should be stingier than this (say, 1d4+1). You could also put a limit on how many potions a character can drink in a day without getting sick, especially if they are easily craftable or bought from shops.

Another opportunity I saw in MP was using this more simple and flexible system to handle interrupted long rests. If a long rest is interrupted by rude bandits or ghouls, should you get all your spell slots back anyway, or none of them? I believe RAW it’s none of them, but this seems too punishing especially if a character has already used up all their slots. A nice halfway solution is to restore half your spell slots, but how exactly? Well, I could use a somewhat complicated system where you break all your spell slots down into 1st level slots, add them all up, restore half of that pool, and allocate which slots you get back based on that budget (makes sense in my head but difficult to explain). Or, just get half your total MP back. Easy!

Using an MP system is also a godsend for DMs trying to use enemy spellcasters. Instead of keeping track of a monster’s spell slots (which most of us understandably don’t do anyway), we can keep track of the monster’s MP instead, in the same way as we normally keep track of its HP.

The main caveat of this system is that it’s not intuitive how much MP each spell level costs, so DMs and spellcasting players will need to keep the chart handy until they know the MP costs by heart. It also introduces additional mental maths that have to be done, with mistakes more easily leading to players using more or less MP than they’re supposed to. This is why there is no shame in making a calculator one of your tools at the table! Indeed, rather than making the game harder, I think the MP system might make it EASIER for new players to pick up spellcasters. The spell slot system isn’t the most intuitive thing in the world, especially when the word ‘level’ has distinct meanings between spells, slots, class levels and character levels, which don’t always align with one another. Newcomers coming from video games will find this especially easy, as most gamers already know what mana bars are, the same as health bars.

The second caveat is… this is all theory. I haven’t actually playtested this system very much as my Elder Scrolls campaign has only just started. The cleric and wizard of the party haven’t yet had an opportunity to cast many spells. I don’t foresee any major problems with using this system especially at low levels, but I’ll make another post if I do find them.

P.S. Warlocks!!! Their spell slots work differently to other classes as they always cast at the highest possible level and regenerate on a short rest. Using the MP framework doesn’t actually change anything here, as for balance reasons you should spend MP as if for your highest spell level even when casting a lower-level spell that can’t be upcast. For this reason, I recommend warlock players continue to use pact magic slots instead of warlock MP, and for multiclassers to track their MP and pact magic slots separately. If you’re going to use magicka potions in a game with warlocks, you should also think of a balanced way warlocks can use them, but that’s beyond the scope of this already too-long post.