#and no more

[the-ultimate-owl]

The only credit I am giving to this April Fools on Tumblr, is that folks can choose to participate, and allow you to interact with others, make it a Tumblr-wise boop fest.

[elrhinochtone]

An alternative to social rolls

Every single time a player of mine rolls to remember relevant information or lie to someone, I die a little bit inside.

That's because both of those things are incredibly stupid - not in a "haha, your 20 charisma bard can roll a 1 to charm the barmaid" kind of way, but in a "Oh wow you did everything absolutely right and yet the dice fucked you over when it should have worked" kind of way.

TTRPGs, at their core, are about making interesting choices. In that light, you want to minimise dice rolls as much as possible. Dice rolls are bad, they mean you can't arbitrate what's happening through simple logic. They're a last resort.

And the truth of the matter is, there is rarely any reason to actually roll charisma. There just isn't. You know the character, you heard the PC's arguments, you can decide whether the NPC is convinced or not. No dice roll necessary. This is a good thing. It means social puzzles and encounter provide meaningful, impactful choices to your party.

The problem, of course, is that this method relies completely on player skill, as opposed to character skill. If your PC isn't really good at improvising arguments, then they can't really play a bard.

So social rolls suck, but you still want players to be able to use the game's rules to impact social situations. This has been a thorn in my side for quite a while, until a friend came up with the solution for me : Just Use Tokens lolz.

Here's the rules : you get a number of tokens equal to your charisma, or social score, or 5 + Charisma modifier, or one token per point in the social stat, whatever. You can spend those tokens for the following effects :

Make someone reconsider an argument they've dismissed

Make someone give you one more chance to argue your case

Force a subordinate to obey an order

Momentarily get a crowd's attention

Get a general idea of someone's mood

Immediately learn if someone lied to you or not

Block the above effect. If you choose to, you can both keep spending tokens until one of you gives up, at which point the truth is either revealed or left in limbo.

If you're unfortunate enough to be using a system that has a social skill system, just split these possibilities between the appropriate skills and distribute specialised tokens, or use the skill as the maximum amount of instances tokens can be spent in a single conversation or whatever. It's dirt simple to implement and won't make your rules more complicated in any way that matters.

Here's the thing : none of the above effects replace or supersede player skill. They only either give them a chance to actually play out the social puzzle or give them more information to solve it with. This gives socially bad players a chance to play socially good characters without making it all about dice rolls and eliminating choice : their role as the party face is to buy them time to convince the other party and weasel out enough information to actually do so - they barely have to talk at all except to beg the local bigwig to reconsider and give them a moment of their time.

If you can't see just how much better this is in every single way, I don't have the words to explain it to you. It increases player knowledge, give them tools to play with and preserves player choice. This is the holy grail of game dev right there.

The exception is the insight/deception bidding minigame. But that's just cool. Imagine, for a moment, a player taking a risk a lying to a dragon or something :

Dragon puts down an insight token. Player puts down a lie token. Dragon puts down another. Player. Dragon. Player, sweating. Dragon, smiling. And this uber-powerful entity just keeps putting down tokens. Imagine them sweat ! This is just good gameplay.

And like okay, there's probably some fine-tuning to be done. I haven't actually given you any rules for a concrete system yet. But in the broad strokes, this just… solves social rules forever. There are no possible drawbacks to using this system over dice rolls.

And I'm a nerd, and that got me very excited, so I'm putting it out there. Use this and thank me later. I beg you.

[victusinveritas]

For those not in the know, this is one of the Amanita mushrooms referred to as a Destroying Angel. Never, ever, ever, ever forage with an app. Especially for mushrooms.

[memeclassheroes]

[arynneva]

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

[moodsandtenses]

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LESBIANS: 2x08 - “Killing is a Cycle”

[dredsina]

Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than "Sorry I'm not interested." No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I'm not interested. Don't answer their questions. Don't give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.

[mayhemchicken-artblog]

in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off

EDIT: reblogs are STAYING OFF. op was right and correct and i have never regretted making a post as much as this one. if you want to reblog my art you can reblog something else from my blog. or commission me, lord knows i deserve financial compensation for the nightmare this post has put me through

[sirompp]

hi. i made some images.

feel free to take them and use for whatever you may need them for. no credit required

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[unsung-idiot]

some quick drawings of little Soos I made a while ago

[chongoblog]

Me, after forgetting to cut the top off an onion before dicing it: “Aw dammit”

The Gordon Ramsey that lives in my head: “Don’t worry there, this mistake isn’t going to ruin anything. No need to be too hard on yourself”

Me: “Wow, that’s…not what I was expecting”

Gordon: “Of course, you ought to know by now that I don’t shout at cooks just to do so. I do it because the people in hit television show Kitchen Nightmares are putting their services out into the public and claim to be good enough to have the title of head chef. You’re just some guy in your twenties making beef stroganoff for yourself and your roommate. I’m kind of a dick, yeah, but I’m not gonna scream at you for a minor mistake like this”

Me: “Oh….well…thanks”

Gordon: “You’re welcome…cunt…”

[seldomsee]

I can't stop thinking about this post

[oncorhynchus-nerka]

VERY IMPORTANT a dam in the Netherlands, the weerdsluis lock, is directly on a migratory path for spawning fish. They have a worker stationed there to open the door for the fish, but they can take a while to open it. So to keep the fish from getting preyed on by birds they installed a doorbell. Only, the fish don't have hands to ring the doorbell. If you go to their website, they have a LIVE CAMERA AND A DOORBELL that YOU RING FOR THE FISH when they're waiting, and then the dam worker opens the door for them! I can't express how obsessed I am with this. look at this shit. oh my god.

Please check on the fish doorbell once in a while :)