#best way to play this game is to never go on the forums and in fact never speak to anyone else who plays it i think

[here-there-were-dragons]

after seeing the last full day of constant extremely vitriolic and accusatory rants acting like they're under seige from a ceaseless tide of hateposting compared to the like two more posts i've seen even mildly criticizing the new breed. yeah i'm convinced people are mostly just making up a guy to be mad at. and i checked onsite and unless the staff have deleted a bunch of shit again (which wouldn't surprise me, they're fond of their nukehammer) i didn't find very much of the Endless Flood Of Disgusting Hatred Tm there that people seem to think they're drowning in either, beyond like, a couple of people on the announcement post being rude, and like one disappointment thread where some of the posters were being shitty and fatphobic about it. if nothing's been deleted then the only way i can imagine the near-universal angry defensive outcry forming as it has is if people are going out of their way to interpret literally every single criticism as being secretly about fatness even and seemingly especially when it's not. and two thirds of the "defenses" are just basically "people aren't allowed to have different tastes from me or want different things out of a design" and are one step over the line in the notes of a minor art edit post off from being like that person in the keel announcement thread way back that went around insulting people's keel reinterpretations and calling them skin conditions. i've already seen people calling the person that edited the male silhouette just to move the tail back a little a fatphobe and an entitled whiner and bigot.

people going to legit war over this thing and the mere idea that anyone might not love it quite as much as they do. people defending a goddamned dragon png from what seems to be a largely imagined horde of dogwhistling bigots like it's life or death. acting like the lead actress of wicked when anyone mildly alters a precious dragon png in a way that does not even remotely alter it's weight. i don't know how to express how absurd all of this is to people who seem to genuinely think that the existence of dragon dislikers is a direct and personal attack on their spirit and sanctity of humanity and that this is some sort of vital symbolic battleground for ideological victory against the dark forces of bigotry and hatred. meanwhile i can barely even find anyone both on tumblr and on the forums mentioning the weight as anything but a boon. which again, makes it seem like people are going absolutely out of their way to interpret every single criticism-adjacent post as secretly being about fatness. i like the things generally speaking and i feel very clearly that it's completely impossible for me to say anything honest about some of my issues with them because i know for a fact that literally no matter what i actually say i have an issue with or how clearly i articulate what i'm talking about i'll just get a flood of people screeching about how "you can just say you hate fat people and go" and shrieking about how entitled i am and how i'm a hypocrite because someone else once said they wanted something that mildly contradicts the thing i'm saying i'd prefer and as we all know people you disagree with are a monolith and yelling about how no one is allowed to complain about biological plausibility or factual consistency because it's a "fantasy game" even if neither thing is literally ever brought up at all, and so on. because making sure that literally no one ever even mildly criticizes anything about a dragon png game ever is the single most important social issue of our time i guess. if you mention any issue that could be even remotely construed as related to their weight or body type on any level you get called a fatphobe and if you DON'T have any issue even possibly arguably related to their weight then they just accuse you of being a closet fatphobe anyway. lack of evidence of guilt is treated as evidence of guilt! you can't win! no one's allowed to dissent in the slightest without it being a secret signal of evil and a direct personal attack on Likers in general! and you're not allowed to *like* something unless it's completely unconditional with absolutely no actual thought or criticism either! the repeated posts i've seen as well about how "I'vVE never felt the urge to go on site just to say i don't like something, that's so weird, what's wrong with you?" are especially baffling and stupid as well, because how the fuck do you think the developers are supposed to figure out what people want and don't want if the only thing anyone's allowed to do is log on, post some largely contentless mindless positivity like "OOOGHOUGHHHGHG I LOVE" with zero delving into any real aspect of exactly why they like it, and never say anything at all when they don't? don't lie to me, i know no amount of constructiveness in criticism is ever enough for you no matter how much these types go on about how criticism needs to be constructive. it didn't take very long at all for the people yelling about concrit back in the day to jump all the way to "actually concrit is bad and evil and entitled too. no one is allowed to say anything unpositive about anything i like ever no matter how politely and constructively you word it". this is a problem fr's had for it's entire lifespan and all it's ever done is get worse and more gaslighty and goalpostmove-y. laying eyes on this eldritch horror of a fandom mindset feels unsettlingly like talking to my mother when she's at the absolute deepest point of her deluded violent manipulative everybody's-out-to-get-me-and-i'm-the-purest-saint-alive lunacy.

and i know if anyone manages to find this post (god i hope not) i'll just get someone putting words in my mouth going on about how i and everyone else just want to bitch about their weight and them not being "elegant" enough (and that apparently people have decided that's a secret code for Skinny now) even though i literally never said any of those things and neither did 90% of the other people i've seen even mildly criticizing anything

and i can't emphasize enough to any outsiders that might be watching that all of this is about a png of a grub-based dragon on a neopets clone dragon game, that i like and think represents a step in the right direction for breed design philosophy and body type variety

[uwurakax]

˖ ˳·˖ 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏, 𝐈'𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐊𝐀𝐈'𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐍 𝐎𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄! ᥫ᭡

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 finding an obscure otome game on the internet wasn't on your 2024 bingo card, but with only the cover art and no blurb, you decided to give it a shot. it looked promising enough at the start, and nothing could go wrong, right? ✩

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 various jojo's characters x f!reader

𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 otome || university/college!au || isekai || alt!universe ||

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 cursing (duh) || me thinking im funny asf || dio

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 2.8k

masterlist || next

-> 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

You liked to think that you were an otome game expert. Even if it sounded… strange to the everyday person, it was your niche and who didn't have an out there hobby anyway? Supply and demand, right?

So you’d pride yourself on your extensive, and completely useless, knowledge regarding fictional pixel romance.

That was how you found yourself here, at two in the morning researching a really obscure listing of a dating game that you had never heard of before. There was no description, release date or year, and no mention of a publisher found anywhere.

A Bizarre Dating Adventure.

That was all you had to work with, the title of this so called game. There wasn't even an item picture uploaded. Spending a whopping thirty minutes gave way to absolutely nothing and you weren't going to lie, you were pretty miffed about it. A piece of so-called lost media just happened to be put on sale on a totally legitimate looking website at the grand old price of.. wait, $10?

Now you were intrigued. An otome game for that price? There was no way this was authentic when games of this nature cost upwards of $50 to $80.

With a few more clicks on your laptop, you came to find out there was free shipping included as well.

That was surely safe, you thought to yourself in your sleep deprived mind.

You faltered for a moment before closing the tab, shutting off your device and promptly collapsing onto your bed for the sleep your body craved hours ago.

Damn, you’ll feel that tomorrow.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The following days were mundane at best, your mind drifting to the odd listing of the game. The circumstances alluded you, and during your free time, you found yourself naturally going back to it. Exploring any and every corner you could, even going on the occasional forum. You didn't get much information however, and it seemed the more you looked, the more elusive it seemed.

How was it that no one else seemed to know of this game? Surely that wasn't possible.

It became more and more tempting to just shot the odds and buy it outright and trying it yourself, but you were still apprehensive.

The website didn't do any favours for itself, looking like it hadn't been updated since 2009, and there didn't seem to be any reviews on the authentication of the site either.

You groaned, sinking back into your chair and staring at your ceiling. Closing your eyes, you cautiously rubbed at them, deep in thought as the listing displayed at attention on your screen.

With a deep inhale you leaned forward again, focused as your hand hovered over the trackpad. The inner debate followed; curiosity killed the cat…

but satisfaction brought it back.

Super sketchy website, but if you played it smart, you wouldn't need to give out too much of your personal information. Plus it was dirt cheap for what it claimed it was.

‘Fuck it’, with a click and a few taps of your keyboard filling the otherwise silent bedroom, you received a congratulatory email and in red capital letters were the words ‘SOLD’ on the now ended post.

And so, you were now the future owner of the enigmatic video game, and if you so happened to be scammed… rest in peace that ten bucks.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You were honestly pleasantly, and weirdly, surprised at how quickly your package arrived. Didn't you just order this thing yesterday? The no bigger than A4 sized parcel sat at your doorstep in a white bubble mailer, perched upright. The keys jingled in your hand as you bent down to pick it up, purse falling forward slightly in an uncomfortable manner. Your mood was already soured from the days events, and any little inconvenience had grated you. You were about to roughly shove your bag back and open your door when you realised there was no label stuck to your package. You flipped it over, only to find the same blank space.

That's definitely not worrying at all.

You jammed the key inside your door and forced your way inside with an all too loud slam. You knew you shouldn't have trusted that damn website. Now some axe murdering lunatic knows where you live! You could feel the nerves wash over you, and your heart began to palpitate. Twisting the deadbolt lock on your door gave you some sense of security, but it did little to appease you.

Tossing your keys and bag on your coffee table, you sat into your much too old and worn out lounge as you ripped the parcel open.

Discarding the plastic wrapping, you’d clean it up later, you found that inside was a small case with what you suspected was the game. There was nothing of note on the back, no text, rating, or any other information found. Turning it over, you saw the images of various male characters decorating the cover.

These must be the leads.

You glanced over each of the men as your fingers traced their features.

Four blondes, one brunette, one with dark blue hair, another with dark purple, one with a green undercut, a redhead and at the center was a brooding character with black hair and a tipped down cap.

What an interesting cast.

You couldn't help but wonder what made the creator go for ten different routes. It wasn't like that was unheard of, but it was quite a larger cast of romantic interests. In the midst of your thoughts, you felt a chill.

Like you were being watched.

Walking over to your kitchen window you looked outside, hand still holding onto the keep case. You stayed there for a few seconds, looking at the now setting sun against the trees. The orange glow offers little warmth within your small apartment. You gaze back down at the cover art, focusing on the dark, capped character. You didn't know why, but there was something unsettling about them. The longer you looked, the more the feeling began to fester. Gently facing it down on the marble counter, you headed into your bedroom to shower and change; hopeful that a new set of clothes and washing the day's grime away would lighten your mood.

Spoiler alert, it didn't.

Clad in only a towel, you went back into the kitchen to get a drink, throat parched and getting dry. You drank the cool beverage as your eyes began to wander back to the faced down disc. You still felt unexplainably wary, but it didn't feel so bad in that moment.

Gosh, you were such an idiot, who gets freaked over plastic?

You took the few steps towards it and turned it back over again. Tapping your fingers against the countertop in thought you wondered if you should actually play the game. It's highly possible it was just some kind if virus ready to wipe your entire harddrive, but your curiosity was getting the better of you.

You really needed to see what this was, consequences be damned!

Deciding that you’ll use your old high school laptop, you headed back to the bedroom to change into comfortable clothing. You found a pair of old white, cotton shorts and your well loved gray t-shirt that was much too big for you, left behind by a long forgotten ex. You couldn't even remember his name, or maybe you didn't want to remember. He was an ex for a reason, but the shirt sure was comfortable and his loss for leaving it with you. The only scent lingering on it was your own, so by definition and for all intents and purposes, it was yours.

Placing the game on your desk, you went rummaging around your room for the laptop.

Searching high and low; under your bed and in the wardrobes, resulted in nothing. You spend a good twenty minutes before checking the drawers of your desk and finding it hidden under stacks of scrap bits of paper in the bottom drawer. How cliché, and of course it was there.

Agitated, you moved your current laptop away and plugged in the old tried and true. It got you through high school, so hopefully it’ll make it through this.

Though you had hoped inside it wasn't a dud, as you began to feel sentimental about the outdated electronic.

If it did, you'd think about setting aside the money to have it fixed, even if it wasn't worth it - and it most definitely wouldn't be worth it.

You waited a couple of minutes for the thing to boot up, dusting off the slight dirt that accumulated from its lack of use. The age of the laptop was clear as you heard the fan blare to life.

Would it even be able to run the thing? There's no way you'd risk your actual computer on this…

Once deemed ready enough, you pressed down on the disc drive a couple of times, using much more than necessary force on the last push when the reader wouldn't open.

You waited impatiently as it closed with a quiet click, tracing your finger over the trackpad as the cursor moved violently across the screen.

You kept waiting… and waiting… and waiting… until….

Black.

The screen had shut off, and no amount of pressing the power button, force restarting the laptop or even hitting it did anything.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” the disbelief and anger present in your tone as you plugged the charger cable in and out of the port.

You weren't entirely surprised it was a scam, a virus now killing your laptop, but that didn't mean you weren't any less pissed.

Yeah you were lucky it was an old laptop, anything on it long since gone when the thing was reset before you graduated, but still…

What a waste of a laptop and the ten dollars spent on a useless thing. On the off chance that the laptop's hardware was too old to run it, you couldn't even get the disc back unless you wanted to pry the drive reader open and damage it further.

With a huff you slammed the laptop shut, grabbing your phone and laying down in your bed. You’d figure out what to do when you had time, but you were too upset to deal with your broken device now.

At least you had the sense to use an old laptop with no data. Gotta take those silver linings.

To lift your spirits, you ordered some takeaway, eagerly awaiting to stuff your face full of the greasy food. After the later half of the day, you felt like you deserved it, and the knock on your door couldn't come soon enough.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Switching off your television, you reached beside you and tapped on your phone screen to check the time.

10:34pm.

You debated whether you did want to sleep now, but your body decided to answer for you as you let out a loud yawn.

Your lounge was pretty comfortable right now, but after previous experiences, you'd definitely be feeling it in the morning.

The longer you stayed, the more difficult it would be to leave so you quickly got up, threw away the rubbish from your order and went on to do your nightly routine.

After the final step of brushing your teeth, you went to bed, flicking off the bedroom light before you looked towards your desk. Your laptop illuminating a glow along the edge.

Well that's suspicious… that's weird…

You shook your head off the image and voice of Cardi B and slowly sat down at your desk. Tentatively reaching out and opening the laptop you were met with a title screen.

A Bizarre Dating Adventure.

A deep blue background with the words in a hot pink gradient that faded to white. Deep violet coloured roses garnished the sides as different hues of purple petals fell from the top of your screen.

A Bizarre Dating Adventure, that was the name of the game from the listing, wasn't it?

Absentmindedly, your middle finger moved across the trackpad, white sparkles glittering off the cursor with every motion.

Surely a few minutes wouldn't hurt right? Just to get a feel and understanding of the game.

Small, white text slowly flashed underneath the title text reading ‘PRESS SPACE TO START.’

“Here goes nothing.” you murmured, as the screen faded to black, shrouding your entire room in darkness as well.

After a few seconds of nothing, you became apprehensive. You silently prayed that it didn't conk out on you again. There was no way you’d be teased like this.

It felt like a minute before the black screen started to light up again imperceptibly, a slight purple tinge colouring against the blackness. More white text appeared.

>> ‘HELLO’

You awaited the continuation, but nothing else had occurred, the bold letters staring at you. You clicked all over the screen and tapped enter, but there was still nothing. On a whim, you ran your hand over your keyboard to see it typed into the screen, right underneath the greeting.

How peculiar.

You held backspace to remove what was a mess of letters and numbers before typing back a ‘HI’ and hitting enter.

>> ‘ARE YOU THE NEW STUDENT?’

New student? Was this game set in a school?

> NEW STUDENT?

>> ‘AT SWF UNIVERSITY’

At least it wasn't in high school, thank goodness. You’d be damned to face another high school otome game. Figuring this was how the game went, but deciding to see what would happen you typed,

> NO

You tried to hit enter, but nothing happened. I guess it wouldn't accept that answer. You deleted the text before following what you assumed to be the correct response,

> YES

>> WELL, AREN’T YOU A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES

The text response was different now, a yellow instead of the earlier white. You felt a shiver run up you, looking behind at your empty room. You sensed that something was wrong, yet you didn't know why.

>> WHAT’S WRONG? SCARED?

Okay this wasn't funny, and this disc was obviously some kind of troll or some deep web, tracking crap. At minimum it was designed to scare you and at most… well you didn't want to think about that.

> A LITTLE

You don't know why you decided to be somewhat honest, but something was telling you that it would be better than lying. Not like it mattered much.

>> HMM, YOU SHOULD BE

You kept rereading the text before the screen flashed with your name, repeating over and over and over again.

Fuck that!

You unplugged the charger, covering your room, once again in darkness. Your breathing became laboured, as your heart beat thundered furiously in your chest, threatening to explode. That most definitely was some type of tracking, data hacking bullshit! Fuck, fuck, fuck!

What were you supposed to do now?! Call the police? Move? You were only kind of kidding about being sent the disc by an axe murderer, but it was now a very real possibility.

You tried in vain to calm down, tears forming at the corner of your eyes. This was so stupid! So completely, utterly and devastatingly s, t, u, p, i, d! You closed the lid and shoved it back into the drawer. It gave you some semblance of safety. Tomorrow you’d go far away and toss it in a random dumpster. To hell with sentimentality, that laptop was now dead to you.

You wished it would've worked earlier, at least then you would've been able to dispose of it. There's no way you were leaving your unit now at this hour.

Maybe you shouldn't throw it away and instead give it to the proper authorities? But if it was just some troll, you'd either be laughed at out of the station, or berated for wasting their time with nonsense.

You triple checked your deadbolt and closing every curtain, also ensuring that every window was sealed shut and locked.

Retreating back to your room you hid under the covers, the fluffy security net doing little to curb the anxiety that was manifesting inside.

You were surprised to feel yourself growing drowsier, the cute cat compilation video that you put on was only 6 minutes in.

You fell asleep shortly after that, your phone showing a ginger cat jumping off a shed roof and face planting into the concrete.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You woke up with a start, sitting up as you gasped for breath. You could feel the slight sweat covering your body, a stuffiness surrounding you as you attempted to slow down your breathing. You looked around the room, a new panic forming as you saw the furniture and belongings of someone who was definitely not you.

Your room didn't look like this! Neither was that desk, or that chair! These sheets weren't yours either.

You closed your eyes as your breathing picked up again, thinking of what to do next before your phone went off with a ding.

Reaching down, you unlocked your phone screen as the words ‘A BIZARRE DATING GAME’ faded into view.

Uhm…

WHAT THE FU-

[opreaadriann]

✘ Demo ✘ Patreon ✘ Discord ✘ Forum ✘

Will you finally get your revenge?

At the young age of 11, you were publicly humiliated in the most brutal way by the popular kids, betrayed by your best friends, and traumatized for life.

7 years later, you come back to the town you've abandoned, a changed person, with a completely different look, personality, and an amazing wealth behind you to support your... endeavors.

Get to live a full academic year alongside your 8 targets, as you befriend, betray, and even romance them to get what you want. Learn their wicked secrets and decide what you'll do with the information. Will you forgive them after learning of their reasons for destroying your life or will you go through with your sweet, sweet revenge? The current version of the demo is 102k words.

The game is still a work-in-progress, so any suggestions are appreciated! If you find any bugs or issues, make sure to mention them.

Features:

Play as male, female, or nonbinary.

Romance your 6 childhood bullies, your 2 childhood friends, or hidden allies.

Live the tragic childhood events that lead to the worst day of your life and decide how everything went down.

Almost all targets will have deep secrets that you’ll have to discover throughout the story and use against them.

Pretend to be a charismatic popular kid, a likeable klutz, a rebel that goes against the norm, or the edgy, silent type.

Lie, charm, spy, blackmail, everything is on the table to get your revenge. There is no “good” way to learn the targets’ secrets and there’s no perfect way to get the job done.

Your stats will almost never affect your capability to get revenge. All that will make a real difference will be your relationship with all the characters.

Spend a full academic year getting to know your targets, interacting with them through random events, relationship events, or hobby events, similar to a Persona game.

Romance Options:

Targets

Dylan Evans

The first friend the MC ever made, Dylan was once just a nerdy Asian kid with big square glasses, playing video games with you every single day. However, as time passed, he turned into a social media influencer, garnering over tens of thousands of likes on every post.

With an incredibly fake smile, Dylan manages to turn most people into his followers, as his strategy to suck up to the rest of the students seems to work quite well.

Though he seems to be quite irredeemable, you do remember him being a selfless kid with a big heart. There are so many memories with him helping you out whenever he could, being the only person you could confide in. What could have made him turn against you when you needed him most?

Olivia Hartley

If your MC had to choose the most unlikely person to ever do them wrong, then Olivia would be their first choice. Strong willed and incredibly sarcastic, this raven-haired tall girl has remained exactly the same 7 years later.

And yet, she did betray you on the day of the Tragedy, giving secret information to your bullies and allowing you to fall victim to their prank… What could have been her reason?

Olivia is an incredibly intuitive person, with a quick mind and a powerful personality to boot. Someone like her will likely be a huge challenge in the upcoming revenge, but not even she can stop this mastermind.

Michael Knox

This tall, dark, and handsome captain of the Baseball team can be, depending on your choices, the person that tricked you into falling in love with him, only to publicly humiliate you in front of the whole school.

He is an incredibly talented athlete with a very arrogant attitude, assuming that the world belongs to him. With a very rich dad to support him, nothing has ever gone wrong in his life, if we were to ignore his mother’s death during his birth.

Can he be considered one of the main antagonists of this story or is he just a secret follower that only followed orders during the Tragedy?

Cecily Knight

Ah yes, Cecily Knight. Everyone, everywhere knows who Cecily Knight is. This petite blue-eyed blonde is the captain of the swimming team, and regularly publicly humiliates anyone that attempts to get to know her romantically.

With such a strong reputation, Cecily manages to order around anyone in the school with ease, as they all lower their heads when she passes them on the hallways.

However, observing her more closely can reveal that she is much more docile with her friends and loved ones. Is she actually an ice queen or is it all a facade to protect herself?

Connor Cobb

With his long blond hair and piercing smile, Connor tends to attract every girl that passes his way. His charisma is unmatched between the targets, with most of the unpopular kids around the school admiring him.

As the star guitarist of The Fighting Rooster, Connor is an incredibly talented individual that planned the whole part of the Tragedy where they befriended you first before destroying your life.

Though he seems like a total idiot, looking into his life seems to reveal that there is more to him than just this fake persona he shows everyone. With 3 younger siblings, Connor seems to have a lot on his shoulders as many in his family look up to him.

Isaac Freeman

With his curly red locks and emerald eyes, Isaac manages to trick many people into thinking he is someone they would like to get to know. As the mastermind behind the Tragedy, he is the worst out of all the people on this list.

It is quite common for him, even 7 years later, to bully students so badly that they decide to move schools. By observing his behavior, it seems that all he cares about is being thoroughly entertained.

Either make him laugh, do something outrageous, or get out of his way, as he will do his best to make every day more interesting than the last.

Vivian Porter

Vivian turned from Isaac’s best friend in her childhood to Dylan’s current confidant. With a seemingly perfect appearance and an endless wardrobe, Vivian manages to impress anyone that sees her pass by.

She is incredibly empathic, being able to tell what anyone is feeling at a glance, allowing her to use this skill to make anyone fall for her ambitious tricks.

Is she just someone that just made a mistake during childhood or are her intentions impure at this age as well?

Haley Freeman

As Isaac’s twin sister, nobody would expect her to be the biggest goody two shoes the world has ever seen. Seemingly stuttering her way through most conversations, people usually tend to forget she even exists.

This curvy redhead has a deep passion for painting, as she spends most of her time in the school gardens, capturing the view.

Is there more to Isaac’s sister than meets the eye or is she just another victim of Isaac’s abuse?

Allies

Angela Pace

A swimmer with long, brown hair, Angela is part of the team alongside Cecily. After being bullied into submission by the harpy, she reluctantly decides to help the MC carry out their revenge against their many targets.

With a bubbly personality and a merciful soul, Angela is possibly the worst ally for this revenge you could find. However, this doesn’t mean she can’t be tricked into giving you what you want.

Marcus Parmer

Marcus has led a horrible life during high school. Being diagnosed with a medical condition forcing him to go bald, he has been constantly bullied by Isaac ever since he joined the Baseball team.

He is much more serious than any of the allies you can find in the school, but he isn’t the most capable person for the job. He is, however, excited to help you get rid of the scum pretending to be students in his school.

[hpowellsmith]

Heart's Choice WIP announcement: Heart of the Mountain by Fay Ikin

Heart of the Mountain is a new Heart's Choice text game by Fay Ikin, the author of Heart of Battle and Asteroid Run: No Questions Asked. It's in the same setting as Heart of Battle, with a new MC and totally standalone.

Play Chapter 1 here! Fay would love to hear whatever feedback you have if you have a moment - either on the forum, or send it to me and I'll pass it on to her as she's not on here.

-

The war between the Coritan Republic and Messimera has been over for years, but as a magician you’ll never be free of your duties to your country.

With control over warmth and heat energy, you’ve been sent to a remote Messimeran outpost, where a small group of soldiers from both sides have been tasked to cooperate and guard the northernmost demilitarized zone…where your predecessor went mysteriously missing.

If anyone crosses the mountain pass or the frozen waterway, the peace treaties could fail. It’s frigid, isolated work, and monotonous until a mysterious fellow magician falls at your doorstep hiding dangerous secrets. Will you welcome your kind, or support your colleagues’ suspicions of them?

Everyone has their own agenda - and their own secrets to guard. When their goals oppose each other, who will you support and who will you stand against? Who will you keep close when your magic starts to fail, when paranoia and fear strike the outpost? A mysterious force within the mountain threatens to topple everything your country has worked for. What are you willing to lose to survive - your livelihood, your love, or your magic itself?

Heart of the Mountain is set in the same setting as Heart of Battle, 4-5 years later. All of the characters are new for this game, though backstory elements can have some familiar notes from the previous game. You won’t need to have played Heart of Battle to play this game.

I’m aiming for 3 or 4 chillies - some sex scenes are very explicit, and some will (at the reader’s choice) feature some intense kinky experiences.

As with Heart of Battle, it’s v/v. The MC can be a man (cis, trans or non-specified), woman (cis, trans or non-specified) or non-binary person (AMAB, AFAB, or not specified); the love interests are selectable between cis man/cis woman/non-binary.

There are four characters alongside the MC - everyone the MC interacts with is romanceable and plot relevant, and the conflict between different love interests’ goals and ambitions drives the plot.

All the characters have the possibility of a happy ending, but on some high-conflict routes some characters can become hostile antagonists

There are currently some polyamorous options planned: Eleri/Felician/MC, and Stelare/Theano/MC.

Romance Options:

Captain Felician Resende

GRIEVING OFFICER from the Coritan Republic

Felician’s magician best friend, the MC’s predecessor, went missing a month ago: a devastating loss Felician is still struggling to accept. With bad experiences with magic in the war, and a lingering deep distrust of magic, Felician’s trying hard to keep it out of the way of professional - or personal - relationships.

Best Felician: honorable, go-getting, enthusiastic

Worst Felician: inflexible, manic, controlling

What to say: “I agree, a five mile hike is a perfect team-building opportunity!”

What not to say: “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve made some amendments to your chore chart!”

-

Sergeant Eleri Katsaros

CONFLICTED ENGINEER from Messimera

You can’t get secrets out of Eleri with a prybar, but it’s still obvious that Sergeant Katsaros bitterly regrets whatever happened during the war. So now, here’s someone committed to being kind while frozen with shame. Eleri can’t imagine being called a good person, let alone believing it.

Best Eleri: Idealistic, practical, reliable

Worst Eleri: Fatalistic, brittle, volatile

What to say: “Let’s stay up until four in the morning to do inventory. In silence.”

What not to say: “I’ll only give you your toolbox back if you can name five things you like about yourself.”

-

Doctor Theano Leventis

MISANTHROPIC PHYSICIAN from Messimera

“Doctor Leventis has the potential to be a shining star of the Messimeran Army…if only Leventis could match talent with compassion”.

This, like other performance reviews, Theano has disregarded as ‘pointless sap’. There’s little point in babying other people’s emotions when there’s any number of things to do instead: music, reading, gambling, scientific analysis…you name it, Theano can do it. Unless it requires a bedside manner.

Best Theano: Creative, progressive, perceptive

Worst Theano: Bitter, destructive, dismissive

What to say: “Why would we be emotionally vulnerable with each other when we could get drunk and pass out instead?”

What not to say: “I’m sorry, but the future of the outpost relies on your ability to give me a convincing hug.”

-

Stelare Belmonte

FLIGHTY MAGICIAN from the Coritan Republic

Magic academy washout, army washout, an Illustrious’ magickeeper’s washout, an arena designer washout…is there anything Stelare can’t get fired from for ‘wilful disobedience and lack of adherence to basic safety’?

Stelare has telekinetic magic: the application of force to move and manipulate the world. But instead of being indispensable, Stelare has happily embraced the label of ‘massive liability’ and the freedom that comes with it. But what exactly is the plan on this remote, classified mountaintop?

At their best: Passionate, ambitious, protective

At their worst: Unpredictable, careless, vindictive

What to say: “I made you some hot chocolate, the others are so jealous!”

What not to say: “You don’t scare me…you’re just mediocre.”

[bbrissonn]

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐞𝐰 - 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐡

☆⋆｡°‧★ in which dahlia's friend force her out of the house to go to a hockey, leading to a night of small glances and smiles ☆⋆｡°‧★ will smith x dahlia monroe ☆⋆｡°‧★ wc: 1.3k ☆⋆｡°‧★ au masterlist

‎‧₊˚✧[ OCTOBER 13, 2023 ]✧˚₊‧

"hurry up, will you?" dahlia's friend, violette sighed from the door of their dorm. it was opening at conte forum, and somehow dahlia's friend group had convinced her to go to the game.

"vi, the game starts in an hour, calm down. we have plenty of time."

"plenty of time? girl, everyone and their moms are trying to go to this game. apparently the team this year is gonna be really good."

"people have been saying this every year forever now, and they haven't won for like ten years or something."

"but this year is gonna be different, trust me. they got all these players coming, cute players." violette said, wiggling her eyebrows at her best friend. dahlia's eyes rolled to the back of her head. the last thing that was on her mind right now was boys, cute or not, it didn't matter. she was finally in college, ready to have the best four years of her lives, and she was not going to let some douchebag hockey player ruin that for her.

"i don't care if they're cute or not, vi. athletes are assholes, and you know that." the monroe girl said, referring to their junior year of high school when violette got her heart broken by a basketball player, and then a soccer player. it was a though year.

"doesn't mean you can't enjoy looking at them. i got us seats right behind their bench to!" the girl squealed as the two exited their dorm room.

when they got to the forum, there was an extremely long line to get in. violette had been coming to games her whole life with her dad, and she had never seen one this long before.

"jeez, all this just to watch sweaty man run after a rubber disk..." dahlia whispered as the two waited in line.

"hot sweaty man, they're skating and it's called a puck."

"that's in a shape of a disk and made of rubber."

soon enough, the two girls made it in, with twenty minutes to spare before the start. warmups were almost done when the two girls got to their seats. there was only a handful of players on the other team still on the ice, and about ten eagles.

"why're they just standing there and talking? are they gossiping?" dahlia gasped, confused as to why a trio of eagles were just standing at the blue line across from them.

"i dunno, maybe." her best friend shrugged, not really paying attention to them. but for some reason, dahlia's eyes stayed glued to them. they were laughing and shoving each other a bit, each playing with a puck. as the clock neared the last minute of warm ups, the boys slowly started making their way to their changing room.

as they approached the bench, dahlia made eye contact with one of them. he had blonde hair poking out the side of his helmet and a wide smile on his face as he laughed. the girl hated to admit it, but he looked good. his smile was truly beautiful and contagious.

the two held eye contact until the boy disappeared past her vision. their eye contact didn't go unnoticed from her best friend, nor his friends.

"girl, what was that?" violette asked with a smirk on her face. dahlia's cheeks during a deep shade of red, her eyes looking down at her lap.

"what're you talking about?"

"don't act stupid, you know exactly what i'm talking. that little eye contact you just with will fucking smith."

"who?"

"will smith, pretty much everyone knows who he is. well expect you of course." violette teased, making dahlia roll her eyes slightly.

"whatever. it lasted like two seconds-"

"more like ten. a little more and his head was about to leave his body so he could keep staring at you."

"you're being dramatic, vi."

"i can hear the wedding bells already." violette giggle, making her best friend slightly shove her. the two didn't talk about it for the rest of night, but violette biting her tongue every time will came back to the bench and stared at her best friend.

all though dahlia would never admit it, the boy caught her attention. his soft smile, his little blond curls, and his intoxicating laugh that could be heard every once in a while. every time he was on the ice, her eyes would always move towards him, even if he didn't have the puck. there was just something about him that drew her towards him, and she hated it.

the eagles ended up winning 4-2 against long island, will getting an assist on the game winning goal. the boy wasn't shy to send a small wink towards the girl right before he disappeared for the last time down the tunnel.

dahlia hated how she could feel her cheeks burning, not even wanting to know how red she was. violette couldn't help but laugh when she saw the look on her best friend's face. her eyes wide with a shy smile.

"girl, what do you have to say now?"

"shut up." dahlia mumbled, her cheeks turning even a deeper shade of red, something the girl couldn't think was possible. the girl waisted no time getting up from her seat and leaving the forum, violette hot on her trail.

the black hair girl seemed to only have one thing to talk about on their way home. will smith. dahlia had never wanted to duck tape someone's mouth shut so badly before. sure the two made eye contact and exchanged smiled lots of times during their game, but it didn't mean anything. dahlia was going to wake up the same person she was this morning, and she would probably never even see him around campus.

violette wasn't the only who noticed all the same looks shared between the two 18 years old. will's linemates were quick to jump on his back when they got back to the locker.

"well that was fun." one of the senior said as everyone started undressing from their equipment, the celebrations done with.

"smitty had a lot of fun, that's for sure." ryan laughed from across the room, making the centerman look at him with confused eyes.

"what do you mean?" will asked in a confused voice. gabe started chuckling as everyone else was just as confused as the boy in question.

"we saw those little looks, buddy."

"what looks?" one of the sophomore asked.

"willy's got a little girlfriend." gabe said, looking at ryan as the two started laughing. the two boys couldn't contain their laughter as will's cheek turned a deep shade of pink, making others in the room start laughing as well.

"shut up."

"don't worry, bud, she was staring at you just as much." ryan added through his laughter.

it was safe to say that will had never gotten undressed and showered so quickly before. it was like all his teammates could talk about was this mystery girl who's name he didn't even know. he was tucked into bed far before gabe had even started making his way home.

"i have french with her friend. i could try to hook you guys up if you want." gabe said once he had made it into his bed and hour after his roommate.

"don't. you guys are making this such a big deal when it really isn't. we made eye contact a couple of times, that's all. i don't even know her name." will mumbled as he turned on his side, facing the wall.

"whatever you want, man. you guys would look good together, just so you know."

the room was silent after that, neither of the two boys saying anything, and slowly drifting off to sleep. meanwhile, across campus, dahlia was laying in her bed, her eyes wide open as the night replayed in her head over and over again.

the boy intrigued her, there was no denying that, but the chances of them ever seeing each other again were slim to none. and there was no way she was going to another hockey game just to see him, it was one of the most boring she had ever watched.

at least that's what she kept telling herself...

[dumblittleboy19]

STORY TIME:

So I’ve never gotten personal on here much. You can call me Addie! If you’ve been on the abdl side of tumbler for 10+ years, I was the male half of ThatOddCouple. We obviously went our separate ways but still keep in touch!

I’ve been into ABDL well before I knew there was even a term for it. If I had to put a number to it, I was probably 10 or 11 when I started to notice I was …..interested in wearing diapers. But there’s a little more to it.

I grew up in a cul du sac with my older sister by 4 years and a bunch of kids slightly older than me. Only thing was that up until I was 10, I was the only boy among the group. And the youngest. And I was “forced” to be walked up and down and all over the cul du sac in their little strollers that their mom would let them use to play “house”. It happened a lot. And it got to the point that I would get jealous when they used the other girl close to my age to be the “baby”. I loved the attention.

At the same time, my mom had a childhood best friend that lived a neighborhood away from us with a son and daughter that were me and my sisters age. I’d sleep over there basically once a week minimum and they would sleep at my house. From toddlers up until middle school I did this. Apparently the son was a chronic bedwetter at night and to make him feel comfortable, she would make us both wear diapers. And she would put each of us in them herself before we got comfy to watch a movie or play video games. I remember sitting in the backseat of the car on the way home the next day and hearing my parents argue about how it was “weird” she did this to her son and me for so long. I LONGED for those sleepovers.

I know both of those stories sound like bullshit. They are real. The other side of this, the side people don’t talk about much, is the negative aspects of their kink. When my parents found out what I was looking at online and how active I was on the DailyDiapers forums (real ones know what’s up) that started an almost decades long cycle of being shoved into different therapists offices to be “fixed”. And whenever a therapist told them I was perfectly fine and not harming anyone, I was accused of lying to my therapists to get on their good side and sent to a new one. It was like this until the day I moved out at 26. To the point where I had to make up a reason WHY I was going to therapy to my vanilla friends and girlfriends.

I spent a lot of my life trying to separate the “vanilla me” and this side of me and in the past 5 or 6 years I’ve just embraced it more. I still keep things separate for the most part, but my closest friends know. I’ve had long term relationships with Mommies and I LOVE a FLR 😍

Always dreamed of having my own place to be little whenever I want and throw abdl parties and sleepovers and have a whole bunch of IRL abdl friends. I’d daydream about having that freedom constantly.

And now I’m doing just that. I host a month abdl banger in south jersey once a month. I’ve made so many friends in the New Jersey/Philly area and they are all such talented and amazing people. We’ve worked really hard this past year and the community we have built is SO amazing. I have become the safe house for people to come and feel like they can be themselves and be little (or be a mommy/daddy. Whatever you fancy). I’ve had people say to me that my house was the first time anybody else has even seen them in their full ABDL gear, let alone compliment them and call them cute and make them feel small.

I love this community and I wanna see it grow more and more. And if you are in the area and you think you’re alone, you’re not. Reach out and let’s be friends.

Well that’s my super long winded post! Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far lmao.

That last pic I salvaged from the old ThatOddCouple tumblr page! I can’t believe I found it. If anybody has any other pictures from that page PLEASE share them with me.

[talenlee]

Decemberween 2024 — My Players

You know who you are, if you’re reading this.

I am a big fan and advocate for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, for the simple and objectively true reason that it is the best version of Dungeons & Dragons that exists. It is the version of this iconic game that enables new players, tactical play, and a consistent, even player power level that still lets players do cool things they want to do. Based on this, it is the game I think that you should always start with if you want to introduce a new player to the most generic platform for tabletop games.

Anyway, I haven’t run 4th edition D&D in about a year. My play group hasn’t been happening.

I have instead been running Blades in the Dark now for about four months for a group that includes at least one player who’s never played TTRPGs before.

If you’re not familiar with Blades in the Dark, oh there’s my link to my review of I’ve written about it, oh and things that are built off it that I also like and even contributed to, oh and here’s me comparing another game to it as a failure, never mind. I think it’s reasonably clear that this is one of my favourite TTRPG systems, for entirely personal reasons. I mean one of the things I love about this game is that the book is nice to hold in the hand, which I could use as the underpinnings of a 2,000 word academic article about interface design or I could just be as honest and say it satisfies me to hold it.

Blades in the Dark struck me as the place to start because it meant that I could hande the pdf to my players and know that they had 100% of the information they needed to play the game and we were all working off the same, public information. This occurred to me as a nice way to ease the experience since I knew I was dealing with more than one neurodivergent player. Blades in the Dark is also very flexible; when players engage with the game, I can reassure them that there’s a lot of power in their hands, that they get to make choices and demands and my job is to adjudicate and illuminate around the, not to present their choices to them.

Blades in the Dark also parcels up player time in really handy chunks; there are scores, there are downtimes, and because the game splits things up like this, a player can drop in or drop out of it easily. That meant that if I set up a game using this system, players could drop in or drop out very easily, and the game would handle the presence or absence of characters, without needing excuses or reasons for why a character wouldn’t be present in the narrative.

Also, Fox, who is playing in the game, she made us a Virtual Tabletop. Now, when I read this to her she’s going to point out that hey, hey, she didn’t make it from scratch, there was already a thing that she built it from or she ‘just’ updated something to make it viable for us, which I appreciate but it’s also silly as hell because just because you bought the table from Ikea doesn’t mean you’re not the person who made it in our living room.

I used Discord for this. I made a Discord, set it to a community discord, and that gave me access to the forum tools. Then, I could set up the forums, where one set of forums were for the players. Each player could make a forum thread for their character, to keep notes, ask questions, put lore, images, that kind of thing. On my side of things I set up a forum of world stuff, where I could put districts, gangs, that kind of thing.

Okay, but this is just describing things around the Decemberween Thing. Right? Like this is a Decemberween article, I’m meant to be using this as an opportunity to tell you about stuff you can watch or listen to, right? Is this promoting an Actual Play or something?

Kinda.

Or rather, I’m trying to promote you, personally, starting your own TTRPG group, with any TTRPG you like, on discord, or whatever, and play with your friends, because that social experience rules. It is the highlight of my week, to show up with my friends, using a Google Spreadsheet to manage my locations and factions and all that, a dice roller program, and the joy of listening to and sharing with my friends. We even have our own strategy examples for doing great at this game, which is, you just roll sixes.

This is what I recommend. I think you should start this kind of thing up. I think you should, if you like TTRPGs, start a group. Ask some friends. You know how many friends you need to try out TTRPGs? One. You can just pick one friend, pick any of the free games, even the GMless ones, and see how you like telling stories together.

And…

I have world information.

I have world building for the setting I made to put this game in. I have this space which is a sort of alt-history, Victorian whalepunk, island country, modelled on Australia, the Phillippines and New Zealand. It has gangs and factions and it has a system for police districts. It has a world deepened by the players’ creations and their contacts and friends and it’s so cool and at least, right now, at least right here, I’m not writing about it, or sharing it with you. Not to be rude to you, not because I don’t trust you or don’t want to brag about how cool my players are!

But because not everything I make becomes part of this blog.

It’s a balancing act: On the one hand, I want to make sure you know that what I do is demystified. Nothing I do is hard, nothing I do is done because I am special and better and able to do things you can’t. On the other hand, these players aren’t here to be Media that I Produce for an Audience. Maybe we’ll all decide sometime in the future to make this as shareable content, maybe letters or missives from the world. Maybe I’ll put together a dossier about the world, its gangs and the lore, so you can use it to run a game yourself, if you like.

Here, though? Decemberween?

I want to highlight that my players are incredible.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[homestuckreplay]

JOHN EGBERT’S GIFT UNBOXING VIDEO LIVE UNEDITED

(page 1052-1069)

‘So much sweet loot. You'd almost think it was simultaneously your birthday, AND Christmas or something. Of course you know that is ridiculous and could never conceivably happen.’ (p.1069)

Today’s update – which was posted on December 21-22, near Christmas, but is set on April 13, John’s birthday – is John blatantly ignoring Rose’s orders and making himself a bunch of sweet loot. The story has laid the groundwork for John alchemizing further, so I think this could still work for someone who’s reading the archive and/or who doesn’t celebrate Christmas – but it’s clearly set up as a real time, shared culture experience.

The things John makes apparently came from an 80 item (!!) MSPA forums poll, with other readers voting on potential alchemy combinations. That’s cute because it’s like we’re collectively deciding what Christmas gifts to give him. Unfortunately I can’t find the poll to see the other options.

I’m going to list off everything John makes for completonism, and then drill down on a couple specific items and discuss the alchemy process generally.

John’s Christmas Loot <3

Hammerhead Pogo Ride (Hammer || Pogo) (5 build 20 shale)

Green Slime Ghost Suit (Suit && John Shirt) (3 build 1 shale)

Wise Guy Slime Suit (Green Slime Ghost Suit || Wise Guy Book) (1 build 5 shale 10 tar) (Contains Secret Trickster Gimmicks)

Serious Business Goggles (PDA && Glasses) (6 build 3 tar 6 mercury)

Telescopic Sassacrusher (Sledgehammer || Colonel Sassacre’s && Telescope) (250 shale 10 tar 50 mercury) (MUCH bigger than John)

Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers (Gushers && Nannasprite’s Ectoplasm) (24 build 30 shale 18 mercury) (has healing properties, but still made by Betty Crocker)

Remote Ghost Gauntlet (Fake Arm && Nannasprite’s Ectoplasm || PDA) (32 build 128 tar)

Left Handed Remote Ghost Gauntlet (Remote Ghost Gauntlet && Bathroom Mirror) (32 build 128 tar)

Barber’s Best Friend (Umbrella && Razor) (2 shale 8 mercury) (I support john branching out weapons wise)

Betty Crocker Barbasol Bomb (Gushers && Shaving Cream) (1 build 1 shale) (terrible, but the || combination is likely even worse)

Cosbytop (Ghost Dad Poster && Computer Tower) (30 build 10 shale)

Fedora + Candy Corn (Fedora && Problem Sleuth Game) (5 build)

?????? (Problem Sleuth Game && Hammer) (30,000 build 90,000 ? 6,000 mercury 180,000 ? 1 ?) [NOT MADE]

Wrinklefucker (Pogo Hammer || Iron) (55 build 44 shale 66 tar)

John thinks that his Serious Business Goggles make him ‘look way cooler, like one of the kids from SPY KIDS or something.’ He then quotes the tagline ‘REAL SPIES… only smaller’ which I thought was a classic Homestuck incorrect quote, but a quick search reveals that this was the actual tagline for Spy Kids 1 (2001). I haven’t seen that movie but I HAVE seen Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003), which is a very Homestuck relevant movie. So I’m planning to rewatch that in the next couple days and see how the game in that movie compared to John’s experiences playing Sburb.

John wearing a bland business suit didn’t feel right to me. It felt like he was playing a part, either dressing up like a movie character or dressing up like his dad because the house feels empty without him, and John feels like he has to step into the ‘man of the house’ role. Now that he’s customizing the suit with the green slime ghost and the possibility of playing 52-card pickup at any moment, this feels like a John outfit. Any suit is still a type of clothing that has a lot of cultural associations, but John showing some identity through his clothes is still meaningful, and the teal looks good on him.

The Cosbytop is a very unfortunate reference and I don’t support Bill Cosby in any way, but the connotations are accidental. From John’s perspective, this person plays a movie character he looks up to. John loves the movie Ghost Dad, but has defaced its poster with ‘IDIOT [R SLUR] DEAD FATHER’. It seems like something John’s dad should have noticed and maybe discussed with John, but instead he apparently ignored it and kept on watching movies with John. I am starting to think that a lot of John’s problems come from his dad’s complete unwillingness to address things openly, which is a common, culturally ingrained trait of quite a few fathers.

And now John has made a computer themed after someone he sees as a good dad, literally creating his own new father figure to guide him through important activities, alchemizing a dad replacement. So there’s a huge difference between John’s conscious and unconscious opinions of Elliot Hopper (the protagonist of Ghost Dad), and he’s unwilling to think through that – he takes a moment to think ‘lousy goddamn stupid subsconscious!’ but immediately moves on. I think John is less able to compartmentalize his feelings towards his actual dad, but they’re just as conflicted.

In and around the SWEET LOOT, we actually learn more about alchemy (although it’s easy to miss in the excitement). John is now using overlapping card && combinations, leading to punched cards with only a few holes, and double punched || combinations, leading to punched cards with a lot of holes. The hammer/pogo combination is the only one where we’ve seen both options. I think this is a missed opportunity – John should have tried Problem Sleuth Game || Hammer and seen if it also cost a ridiculous amount of grist.

The pogo hammer cost 10 build grist and 16 shale, while the hammerhead pogo cost 5 build and 20 shale – the same types of grist for both, but the numbers are different. I’m not sure how an item’s grist cost and types are calculated, or if it’s possible to predict that – but most items John has tried to make, he’s had the right types of grist for. So maybe the items in a player’s house are linked to the grist they collect in the early game, while other items John might discover on his journey (or perhaps on Prospit??) will use grist that doesn’t appear until the late game. The cost could relate to the number of combined items, except the butchered rocket pack (4 combined items) only cost 4 build and 8 shale.

On page 1064, John figures out how to ‘subtract’ one item from another, making a simpler item instead of a more complex one. This is super smart of him, as he accounts for all possible ways the subtraction could work, tries them in turn, and finds which one is right. I want to give John big props for being so smart, but also highlight how different the items from the other combinations are – punch cards with a single hole difference can yield a potted plant, a painting of a horse attacking a football player, and a Ghost Dad movie poster. So it’s not possible to change a single hole to make a similar but different item; there’s a randomization process preventing that.

I also wonder if there’s a maximum number of items that can be combined – John says that by alternating && and || combinations, the total number of holes will stay relatively consistent, but surely there’s a point where combining enough complex items loops back around to making something really simple. Just due to the limited number of hole combinations available, there’s a theoretical limit to how weird this can get, and I think it’d be funny if John combined the Wise Guy Slime Suit with the Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers and ended up with a simple kitchen spoon, because he’s hit the limit.

I understand why Rose wants to save the grist for building John’s house, but most of the items he’s made are genuinely useful – the new weapons are essential, the healing gushers are really smart for if Nannasprite isn’t around, and the serious business goggles will make it WAY easier to keep in touch with Rose without the PDA getting lost in John’s sylladex. Sburb/Skaia is a somewhat malevolent entity, so while this is a fun happy update, I can’t help but wonder if Sburb is trying to sow discord between friends by giving the server and client player two different goals, but a singular resource. Even if it’s not malicious, it’s a trial by fire for this friendship.

> John: Combine playing cards and candy corn.

[mortimermcmirestinks]

I think that when D&D players say that, in contrast to other TTRPGs, D&D is "easy to learn", they are relying on the other person in the conversation to understand the fact that, for the vast majority of players, learning the rules of D&D involves some combination of the following three activities:

playing D&D with a group of friends, some of whom know the rules (to a sometimes, like, encyclopedic degree) and are willing -- often eager -- to patiently explain said rules; additionally, in this circumstance, the explanation and discussing of rules functions as a major fun element of the experience of playing together

watching/listening to at least one and probably several different long-form actual play shows, almost always featuring professional entertainers (comedians, podcasters, voice actors, youtubers, video game writers, etc) doing a good job of making the experience entertaining and often explaining (or learning aloud) the rules as they do it

googling rules and finding a hundred thousand people discussing and poring over the rules all across the internet

like, I'd say that most people who play D&D -- even people who know the rules really well -- rarely (or never) have actually technically read the official original rulebooks.

[shouting desperately over the crowd] it's not about the rules themselves being easy to understand! it's about how ubiquitous community explanation and discussion of the rules is!

players who only play D&D are less likely to pick up other games, not because they think "reading the rules is harder than reading D&D's rules", but because reading D&D's rules isn't how people learn the rules of D&D, and the ways people usually do learn the rules of D&D are often less readily available for other TTRPGs!

if the way Tammy learned D&D was her best friend Stephanie explaining them to her as they watched Fantasy High, and then she filled in the gaps by googling the minutiae and scrolling around fifty forum discussions and Reddit posts until finding answers...

...then if Stephanie doesn't know [specific TTRPG] and Dimension 20 didn't have a [specific TTRPG] season and there aren't a lot of [specific TTRPG] forum posts, then you're not going to convince Tammy that [specific TTRPG] is "easier to learn than D&D", because it isn't "easier to learn than D&D" for Tammy! no matter how simple [specific TTRPG]'s rules are!

and! if you go out of your way to deride and insult Tammy for this, then guess what!! you're not the good guy here!!! you're just being kinda mean for no reason!!!! and you're giving non-D&D TTRPG players a bad name!!!!! holy shit!!!!!! did we all forget that TTRPGs are primarily a community thing or what!!!!!!!

[nebmia]

Reviewing every rpg book on my shelf: 1, Dungeon Crawl Classics

Everything about this game is absolutely dripping with bonkers maximalist bombast that makes me excited to play. To start with book itself is nearly 2 inches thick. Is that practical? No! does it feel like you've got an ancient tome full of roleplaying possibilities? Absolutely.

In a world tending towards minimalism and 'polished' production its so good to have somthing thats just big and fun and unapologetic about not being what it is.

DCC's dice are a microcosm of everything great about it. Not only do they come in shapes they never taught you about in maths class but they also all come with a fun little bonus. One of my sets comes with a stat block for a monster, while the other has a ridiculous table of reality warping effects on which you roll ALL the dice in the set, and inevitably send your campaign careening off into madness. (and it has a frame story about a stoner wizard in a magic van).

And then there's the actual contents of the book, which is probably about 80% spells and ridiculous tables. And the spells are just so good. Each one takes up a a least a full page on average and gives a range of results according to how well you roll, from 'it missfires and things go horribly wrong' at the bottom, through 'it does about what you would expect' in the middle result ranges, to 'actually, this is almost too much' if you manage to get a roll in the 30s.

Alongside being sick as hell, this also has a satisfying effect of keeping low level spells relevent and interesting as their effects scale with the strength of the caster on a variety of axis.

related to spells is the 'spell duel' procedure. I have no idea how well it runs at the table, but the idea that when two (or more) wizards fight their spells can interact and you can use any appropriate spell to try and counter another spell is so increadibly compelling.

Ok, enough gushing about vibes. what about actually playing? So far what I have run is the 'level-0 funnel', which is probably what you have heard about if you have heard anything about DCC. The premise is simple: randomly generate 2-4 level-0 peasants for each player, send them into a dungeon, and then take whoever survives and level them up to become your characters for a campaign.

Not only does these lead to much hilarity as a mob of townsfolk bungle their way through danger but also really fun problem solving as the players work out how best to navigate problems with a shoehorn, a bundle of wood and a live chicken.

Specifically, what I have run is Sailors on the Starless Sea, which is correctly recognised as THE introductory module to use. Its a nice sequence of somewhat open investigation followed by a excellend sequence of bombastic set pieces, all the while giving the players lots of scope to come at things ininteresting ways. It can get a bit unwiedly trying to manage such large number of characters when they do run into combat but if you plan ahead a bit and use various tricks (it would be useful is more of that advice was in the book rather than coming from forums) it is manageable.

And to return to vibes one last time: the art in these books is just so good. We could not be further from the slightly stiff generic highly rendered fantasy art of wotc era d&d. Its all fantastically old school fantasy, so full of character, and just the right amount of rough around the edges. My only slight complaint is that this does include a little too much of old school fantasy art's treatment of women than I would like...There are still prenty of sensibly dressed women and i'm not about to decree that no sexy fantasy women are allowed but the dial is a little further in a direction of objectification that I would like.

[starmendotnet]

RETURN OF THE EARTHBOUND FUNKTASTIC GAMEPLAY SUMMER

Hello everyone! It is with GREAT ENTHUSIASM that we would like to announce the:

But first… what IS a Funktastic Gameplay Summer?

Us Starmen.Netters are bringing back a long-beloved sitewide tradition! The Earthbound Funktastic Gameplay Summer is an event that dates back to 2001, wherein the community collectively plays through EarthBound over the course of several “Gameplay Points” (GPPs). Everyone is encouraged to play along, and our team of stream hosts will be broadcasting their own gameplay on the StarmanClub Twitch channel. In addition, we will be celebrating MOTHER’s 35th and Earthbound’s 30th anniversary!

Maybe it’s been a minute since you’ve returned to the game. Maybe you’ve never played before! The idea is to get fans, new and old, engaging with Earthbound. With introduction out of the way, let’s move on to the deets:

THE SUBMISSIONS

An integral part of Starmen history is fan submissions, where the community creates fanart about the stream events, and just EB in general. As per usual, here are the categories:

Categories!

Writing: Stories, poems, theories… if you wrote it, it belongs here! Handart: Charcoal, paintings, sculptures… if you made it with your hands, it belongs here! Compart: Digital illustrations, 3D models, pixel art… if you made it with a computer, it belongs here! AudioViz: Music, videos, fangames… if it pertains to audio/visuals, it belongs here!

Prizes!

Winners will receive shiny badges on the forum to show off their mastery of Earthbound funk, as well as forum ranks and avatars!

Of course, opening up the floor to fanworks doesn’t come without its fair share of ground rules. Don’t worry though, it’s pretty simple stuff.

Rules!

Submissions must be related to Earthbound/the Funktastic Gameplay streams

If your submission contains content that would require a trigger warning (violence, sensitive subject matters, etc.) please put it in a spoiler box with a warning.

You may submit as many pieces to one category as you like, but only one can place

You may submit to as many categories as you like

Any submission must’ve been made for this event. No previous works!

THE STREAM SCHEDULE

Keep an eye out in our Event forum for the schedule drop, but livestreams won't be the only thing we've got going on!

THE ADDITIONAL EVENTS

If you can’t catch the streams, don’t worry! The streams are only a small part of our summer programming. In addition, there will be other events to keep the party goin’! These being:

Eagleland Scrapbook (July 15th – August 24th):

Get your cameras out and your bug spray on! This summer, we’re running a collaborative photo book! At the end of the event, your photos will be assembled into a digital booklet for your viewing pleasure. So, where to start? Well, we’re limiting subjects to four categories; birds, flora, fungi, and insects.

A couple notes; you’re more than free to submit multiple photos if you’d like, and there is no judgment on the quality of the photos. Just try your best to keep the camera as focused on the subject as possible. The event ends on August 24th, so get snapping! And most of all, have fun!

EB No Natsumatsuri (August 1st – August 24th):

Our highly calibrated MoonWatch Radar indicates that activity coming from the Annual Gift Man’s base is already approaching usual December levels, and climbing! That can only mean EB no Matsuri has come early, and that can only mean one thing: time to prepare a feast for the Gift Man’s arrival! The beloved Starmen.Net tradition returns, but in a brand new form! Instead of gift giving, we would like to encourage everyone to come up with or find a MOTHER-series themed recipe, make it, and share the recipe and pictures of your delicious dish with everyone! It’s a virtual potluck, and everyone’s invited. (Can’t think of what to make? Make Your Favorite Food, of course, whatever it is!)

And now for our final announcement at this time… prepare yourselves for something very special!

A NEW AND EXCITING OPPORTUNITY

This message is brought to you by PorcBanc™

The savvy investors over at PorcBanc™ have very graciously offered all Starmen.Net members EXCLUSIVE and PRIVILEGED access to a cutting edge, Earthbound-themed surprise to our Funktastic Gameplay Summer events! A special surprise will be released to the public on July 21st, 2024. Be sure to stay tuned for more details on all your favourite Starmen.Net media channels! Remember folks:

“With PorcBanc™, we guarantee profits HAM over fist!”

Guarantees or promises made by PorcBanc and its affiliated subsidiaries are intended for marketing purposes only and do not hold any legal value.

An event™ by PorcBanc™

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.192 Welcome home

I have zero idea what went down at home while I dealt with the rental property, but Desiree was not herself as we made our way to Gilbert Gardens. I'd never seen her so unhappy before. Sometimes, I poke around the parenting forums to see what others are going through and how they handle it. There are countless stories about toddler tantrums. As I told Dub the other day, Desi has her moments. But it wasn't until that afternoon I realized she'd never had a true meltdown before. At least not until now. She screamed the entire way to the house. And when I carried her inside, she actually fought me. Yes, Desi, my sweet potato kicked and slapped me and pulled my hair. Sophia said nothing and ignored the whole thing, so I suppose whatever this was about started with her, and she was glad to escape the child's wrath. One thing I learned after reading all those accounts was that these tantrums don't last long, and ignoring is actually the best solution. If you try to fix it by scolding them or even bargaining with them, you could make it worse, so I bit my tongue and just took it. Good thing she wasn't at a good vantage point to do any real damage.

I did, however, set some ground rules when I put her down. Regardless of what the forums say to do, I am the one who sets the tone for this family, and in this family, we don't do emotional outbursts like that. I'm very serious about this being a new chapter of our lives, and I want it to begin on a good note. So, I told her she can holler all she wants, but she's gonna have to stay outside and do it because she's not bringing all that noise into our new house. She continued screaming and stamping her little foot but calmed down pretty quickly, since she really wanted to go inside. I sat her down in the living room with some building blocks while Sophia and I hung our pictures. Once everything was in order, we chilled in the living room for the first and probably only time and enjoyed the fruit of our labor.

Rosie was in one of her clingy moods and joined us, so I played with her for a moment.

"You know what?" I said to her. "I know exactly what you need. Wait here."

I went upstairs and changed into my workout gear.

"I'm gonna introduce you to Gilbert Gardens! You're gonna love it."

As soon as she saw the leash, she knew it was game on and began barking and jumping around. We headed out. I was so excited to share my favorite place with her, I kinda forgot how long the trails around the lake and the Arboretum are. Rosie had a great time, but my knees were screaming by the time we go home. I hadn't jogged a long distance in a while, but that pain was different from being out of shape. I'm definitely getting old.

We all stayed close for the rest of the afternoon, even Rosie. I guess I finally wore her out, heh. That evening, the first of our new neighbors came to welcome us. The Whitney family live in the first house on our street across from the splash park. Neil, however, has actually lived in the neighborhood for a long time. Judging from his son's age, he and I may have moved to San Sequoia around the same time. It's kinda funny that he and I could have met earlier but never ran into each other. He bought that house for his family. He and his ex-fiancee had Karson, their son, when they were just dating. Neil was pretty keen on getting married and raising him together, so he proposed. She accepted, but was very focused on her career and never prioritized planning the wedding. Neil bought the house, thinking they would all live there together one day only for her to call off the engagement. They shared custody for a while until Karson decided to live with Neil full time. And later, and Neil met and married Kaila. It's so funny to me how sims tell me their entire life's story after only knowing me for three seconds. Unlike Chi Chi, Neil doesn't talk a lot. He's just very expressive when he does. As a fellow expressive man, it was great to be on the receiving end.

Karson didn't say much, but he was giving big spoiled brat vibes. Kaila was very extra. The Whitney family was definitely an interesting bunch. When they left, I put Desi to bed. Then Sophia and I christened a few rooms, hee hee.

[quinndominion]

Still bad at tumblr...buried new pics behind 'read more' cut in a reblog...defeats the point of pictures!

Peni said:

(P.S., I'm pretty sure that's Mary, voted "Girl Most Likely to Pull a Cart" four years in a row in high school.)

Mary. Of course, it's Mary!

But you get all the cookies, or virtual sweets of your choosing, for making me delirious-laugh at that line. I've gotten plenty of sleep since and it still cracks me up. Maybe because she is high school age here. And with only two classmates she'd also be voting that for herself for it to stick, lol.

Doesn't surprise me that most sim stories aren't finished. When Life happens, and it will, this time-consuming hobby with no visible objective value will be one of the first things to go. It brings in no money(unless maybe you've got a decent Youtube following). And the emotional satisfaction of writing a story and of having someone read said story are, as you allude to, rather different things.

I spent a dozen years (more if you count TS1) telling myself stories with this game, with no interest or intention of sharing them. I loved that way of playing the game and at a story level there's no real qualitative difference as I am, basically, the same sims player and the same storyteller. I couldn't create my own poses then (a skill that's become both the best and the worst thing to happen to me as a simmer!) but I still made liberal use of poseboxes just as soon as they came on the scene, for pictures no one but me was ever going to see. And still it's such a different endeavour putting these things together for an audience, real or imagined.

But anyway, my point was that I'm not so sure it was always the case that most sim stores weren't finished. Maybe. I never read Exchange stories when the Exchange was around but I feel like a lot of the ones I read archived on that clockwatching site were completed. (Hope that site's still up. Been a few years since I checked...) And yeah, I guess, most of the old stories on LJ weren't really completed but a lot of them went on for years and years - with dozens or maybe even over a hundred chapters - so it didn't really feel like an abrupt, 'wait, wha' happened?' when reading them. And I think that's a function of community and engagement, which is ironic since sooo much more of the community is here on simblr, but it's not really designed for more than ephemeral engagement.

I was lucky in that even though I didn't finally join LJ until it was dying, there were still enough active simmers there that finding friends was way easier than 'accumulating' followers. (Find folks writing stories you like. Tell them why you like it. Easy peasy. Not so with tumblr which also operates on a kind of 'clout' since it's a kind of social media.) I've noticed the new Communities thing that's been rolled out (new to me) and even on those devoted to storytelling I still don't see much traction getting people to respond to words with words, which I suspect is the currency most writers most want.

Oh well, I'm just an old-head, ranting at time itself, wishing forums were a thing again.

End ramble. (But it's just wild to remember a world where a perfectly ordinary - but funny - sim story post might have 10 or 20 or 30 actual comments and responses whereas now getting 10 whole likes on a non-cc post means you're winning at simblr, lol.)

[imoenhatesthis]

Lily Orchard and Imoen: Is the Mod Popular?

So unfortunately, Lily Orchard talks about the Imoen Romance mod in her 'Addressing Allegations' video (starting at 39:31, ending at 41:13) in regards to Courtney, whose made allegations against Lily you can hear for yourself here. Please heed the trigger warnings in both videos, though I won't be going in-depth here.

In this video, Lily describes that Gorion's Ward and Imoen are "the best of friends whose closeness borders on romantic at times...", (40:13) who discover being siblings in BGII. That isn't true but whatever, I'm not here to talk about the game itself. After going through her other sister OCs, she ends by going, "[I] talked about one of the most infamous and positively received mods for one of the most popular RPGs ever made," (41:05) end quote, so clearly this doesn't have anything to do with the real life allegations.

Two issues: One is that this is a deflection that does not address Courtney's allegations at all, or why she would find the fascination with those characters suspect. But the second is that this idea that the mod is popular and well-loved is just not true, and I'm going to spend time arguing against. If anything, how decidedly unpopular it is says that Lily is the one actively seeking out this content.

So why didn't Lily show proof about the mod's popularity in her debunking video? Maybe include a positive review? Well...

There was once a forum dedicated to the mod, populated only by people who'd want to play this kind of thing. So, if Lily is remembering this forum, that information is going to be skewed one way with any negative reviews chased out. It's long gone now, so I can't pull numbers. Instead, I'll be using general forum spaces that are probably the most popular with general BG fans, Beamdog and Reddit.

On the official EE mod release thread on the Beamdog forum... the total combination of posts from the author/coder and players only total 30 pages, with posts as recent as this month. 25 posts a page equals 750 posts altogether from across 10 years, though the most recent page is just 1 post, so 726. If we're SUPER charitable and say that's about 700 people playing and posting there throughout 10 years, not including mod authors, that's a minuscule audience. Especially when the original BGII game sold about 2 million copies, as well as Steam estimated selling about a million copies of the Steam release of the Enhanced Edition. Let's say the old deleted forum had about 1 thousand, maybe 2 thousand members, let's say there may be 10,000 downloads of the mod--that's still such a small percentage as to not matter. Definitely not enough to call it popular in the community.

Googling for lists of the best mods for BGII will bring up mods for the UI, general tweaks, difficulty, visuals, and portraits/voices. Especially portraits, people really like portrait mods. Sometimes the BG1 NPC Project is mentioned (which has it's own controversies, it's just probably the most talked about of any of these), but all of these will come long before a mention of NPC mods. So, NPC mods, especially romantic ones, are a niche of a niche.

On a few forums where I do see someone recommend the Imoen Romance as a "required mod"... most of the time they get a negative response.

(Source)

(Source)

Just straight Googling Imoen Romance mod or mod reviews will bring up forums with pages in the single digits, with general discussion devoted to "Is this incest?" questions. It's impossible to go onto any forum post about the romance without at least one person weirded out by it's existence. So, there's at least a variety of opinions on the mod, it's not overwhelmingly positive.

But fine, that's general forums. What about BG mod reviewers? ONCE AGAIN, never ever reach out to these people.

Lily uses the Smoldering Mod Bar's review of Saerilith Romance to condemn that specific mod for its bad writing and taboo themes. It sure would be something if the mod reviewer also had a negative view on Imoen Romance...Oh wait:

(Source)

Okay, well, let's look at positive reviews instead. Lily has also quoted a Beamdog forum review to defend her views on the mod:

(Source)

Why didn't Lily link to the review in question? It would prove to everyone people love her favorite mod just as much as she does, right? Well, I can link it below:

(Source; scored on a 5/5 scale)

Oh, that's not quite as positive as she'd have you believe. Still liked it, but not quite to the level Lily does.

Here's another Beamdog mod reviewer making similar negative points, despite overall loving the mod:

(Source) Even reviewers who champion the mod as great can point out "Wow, this talks about incest quite a lot in a way it didn't even have to." And about it's other flaws too, things Lily never does.

I'm not saying NO ONE thinks the mod is good or that no one has ever mentioned it. I included positive reviews for a reason.

The issue is lying about how popular and well-liked the mod is in order to paint her sister as a crazy obsessed stalker whose just overreading into things. Especially saying this in a video about those allegations, and especially after saying the Gorion's Ward and Imoen are "romantic at times" all in the same breath. Putting ANY lie in this specific video is a serious stain on the credibility of Lily, thus it's important to call it out.

[avaantares]

Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!

(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)

SO. GUYS.

Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.

I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.

Y'know, this disaster:

I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.

Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.

Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.

That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.

Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:

So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:

It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.

Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?

This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:

Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...

Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.

Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?

.

(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)

[derxwnakapsyla]

Hello there! My name is Derxwna Kapsyla, and you might know me as the mastermind behind projects such as "Yitria Resurrection", "Touhouon Asteria", "Touhou Pupet Play ~ The Adventures of Ayaka", "Chronicles of the Omniverse"- Wait, you don't know that last one? Never mind it then! Today I'm here to talk about something I am extremely passionate about- map design!

It is easily my favorite aspect of game development, and I feel like I'm pretty proficient at it. So, I would like to open up map making commissions to help people out on their own projects! I've got well over 10 years of experience, getting my start back in the ancient days of Binary ROM Hacking with Advance Map being the hottest tool on the block. I like to make sure the maps I make are of the highest standards I can possibly muster, so I have a fairly sharp eye for detail.

I also love communicating ideas with people and helping them reach a desired solution (If I'm able to)! If you're interested in taking a shot on me, I welcome you to message me on here, or DM me on Discord! I look forward to getting a chance to work with you! I promise, I don't bite- I'd much rather use an Ion Cannon. Also I just lost my job recently so I could really use some supplementary income while I try and find a new job...

Things to know about Derxwna:

I've been working with game development as a hobbyist for over 10 years, with an exceptional passion for map design.

I like to make sure that anything I make is the best quality I can possibly produce.

I do have a degree (of sorts) in Game Design, Programming, and Animation.

Spent a good majority of my time playing Wind Waker just trying to compare terrain to Ocarina of Time.

You will not find a person more offended by the tile errors in vanilla Pokemon games, I guarantee it.

What I am offering:

Map design for 2D environment based games.

Map critique and feedback. (This is free!)

Eventing on a small scale.

Redesigning your own maps.

What I am not offering:

A whole game made from scratch (Unless you're paying massive $Revenue).

Complex scripting maneuvers.

Unique tilesets. If you have a unique tileset you want me to use, send it- but I will check if you are allowed to use it.

Trainer battles.

Advice on how to spend your FSA. I answer those questions enough at my previous workplace.

Examples of my work:

-- Touhoumon Asteria -- https://imgur.com/a/hsAjnuk

-- Yitria Resurrection -- https://imgur.com/a/fveRkMc

-- Adventures of Ayaka -- https://imgur.com/a/tYAV8u7

-- Other Map Creations -- https://imgur.com/a/ZzqvrdV

Prices

-- Map Size --

Small map (30x30 or smaller): $10

Medium map (60x60 or smaller): $35

Large Map (100x100 or smaller): $60

Extra Large Map (100x100 or greater): $90

I am willing to take on a multi-map endeavor. Prices will be discounted for bulk purchases. I am also willing to very slightly haggle on the tiers above Small Map, but prices will not go below $10 above the previously listed tier.

-- Eventing --

Depending on event complexity and quantity, additional fees may be incurred.

-- Additional Pricing --

Gen 4 or 5 theme: +$40. I am not comfortable mapping in this style. I can attempt it, but only if you provide a tileset of the exact tiles you want.

When it comes to payments, I am flexible with how I receive them. I understand that people are not comfortable giving an entire lump sum for commissions. If you'd like, we can work out a payment plan of sorts, or you can pay a portion up front and pay the rest upon completion. If I do not or am unable to finish the map, I will refund the amount paid up front. As a note, if you are looking for a rush order, an additional fees may be incurred.

Contact Information

The best ways to reach me if you are looking for a commission, or if you have any additional questions are as follows:

The Eevee Expo Forums

Discord: DerxwnaKapsyla

Tumblr

This is where I would put my Twitter account- if it was unsuspended.

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/derxwnakapsyla.bsky.social

The best times to reach me are between 12 PM and 12 AM PST (GMT-7).