#but it's also for non-magic players to see some of the weird stuff

[niuttuc]

Weird Magic: the Gathering effects: Third edition

Some months ago, I ran a poll and then another where people guessed which of a bunch of weird MTG effects wasn't real. It was fun, so we're running it back with a third batch of weird things.

As last time, only the current text of effects is used, not necessarily the one printed on the card. Limited to cards that exist in paper, and are legal to play in at least some tournament formats. Though last time I did expand to text that's part of keyword rules or that's part of the current reminder text on at least one card.

[ganondoodle]

(totk rant)

something i dont know if i have ranted about specifically is .... how i hate how little defined the sonau (zonai) magic is

like i get it, its magic, but it feels like it can do anything when the idiot plot demands and cant when it doesnt for no good reason, just like the enigma stones (secret stones)

(its not that each little thing is a problem, i dont need everything single thing explained, but that the whole mess of sonau magic, enigma stone magic and elemental magic feels like .. a mess, and a stupid mess at that! you dont know what is what and what soemthing can and cant do and that leads to a bad kind of confusion, one that makes it feel like there are no rules except when the plot demands it)

(also i will forever refuse to call it sonau 'tech', bc its not, its some vaguely stone textured pieces that do a thing when hit or pieces floating around some vague magic bs, theres no cogs, not maschinery, nothing that makes you feel its got an internal mechanism like the shiekah tech had-- worst part being they had planned sonau bs to be more magic than 'tech' but then, as i previously ranted about, decided to make it 'so players can immedaitely know what it does just by looking at it' and then decided they still needed to explain to you what the obvious fan thing does 5 times over when you already learned it on the literal tutorial ALSO ITS A FAN- WHAT IS THERE TO TEACH ME ABOUT IT- ... wrong post .. anyway)

sonau magic, apparently, can, replace an entire living persons arm that was 'beyond repair', when the person giving their arm IS ALREADY A GHOST (or dead for that matter, yes you can argue its the part of his arm that was left over at that point but .... that also leaves the question how the hell he could suddendly, conventiently, move that arm part independendly to catch link, when it flopped over limply a second ago .. and was also able to .. see? how would he catch him otherwise .. but only after it flopped over .. for no apparent reason too, its not like zelda picked the stone right off it or soemthing-- ALSO why does it not look like it then, like its long nailed creepy thing, but instead his perfectly alived arm argh)-

teleport people to places that have moved kilometers away from where it originally was (as in, rauru teleporting link via dismembered arm part train to the garden of time that was not in the sky last he remembered) but ..only like that?? i guess?? since no one else ever teleports via sonau magic, its always shiekah stuff that teleports except for this one instance (and it cant be it just went back to raurus ghost bc .. he acts like he just woke up as a ghost too so he couldnt have been ghost chilling in the garden of time either ....... why wasnt his ghostly version attached to his slightly less ghostly arm part anyway .....)

lift entire pieces of land into the sky i guess ?? (off screen ... somehow .... for no reason ............ after all the sonau that were there were dead (who did that?? the constructs??????????) and no scar left on the surface either)

make shield, once rauru, otherwise minerubot (we dont know if either did that in the og fight with ganondorf since ... we dont get to see ANYTHING of that 'fight' i am BITING this game in a non sexy way)

let you swim upwards and through ANY amount of earth (only link ever does it)

glue literally anything to anything (unless you shake it too hard) and have that glue actully make the glued together pieces work together as if there was a mechanism connecting it (only link ever does it like that, other NPCs are shown to be able to get pieces to work together without it ... and with no explanation either how THAT works, sicne there is no mechanism in anything??) (fuse is just the same glue glued into an extra ability slot, its not different in any means)

can ALSO glue stuff to the literal MASTERSWORD?? which, if i can be honest, i really dont like, idk, the mastersword itself being fused to some random other material and getting those weird green symbols on it while even changing its form temporarily when you pull it out?? idk, that feels like desecrating an holy object to me (and yet again .. sonau stuff in everything and everywhere ..)

reverse time on objects and generally copy other peoples abilities?? its not the stones since link doesnt have one, its like .. built into rauru bracelet even, thats kinda weird, what do you mean his bracelet is perfectly made for housing that exact number of peoples abilities- or ghost copies for that matter O.o

grab someones heart and seal it in a condition between life and death for THOUSANDS of years while dissolving its wielder ??? i would consider it being influenced by rauru light powers (which is still stupid to give to him of all people) having sealing capabilities towards "evil", but when he does it its really only typically sonau magic stuff, green glow, the symbols, the spiral (... why IS it a spiral, did he turn himself into a less stupid version of the shrines? lol)

(now theres things that overlap with the engima stones, but since its all such a mess i cant tell what part is strictly sonau magic bs and what is magic pebble bs and what is just kinda ... both)

stripping people of their clothes and teleporting to weird dream like dimension tm (end of game)

bringing back ghosts (rauru did the oh no im ghost gone now too which is why i cant tell you anything you should know link looooooool- whoops he back) sonia was never even shown as a ghost before (why? .. no seriously, why? you cant me she didnt have any regrets when she died? why does everyone get a ghost like its nothing but not sonia .. until that point .. which is probably just so she can hold hands with rauru and fuck off again, we wouldnt want her around when rauru isnt, the most importnatest coolestest guy to ever kingexist )

reverse irreversible transformations via stone (you can, uwu its time powersss!! me all you want it sucks in every aspect and i will not be argued with)

restore someone 'beyond repair' arm even when it was not fully purified as it was implied to be necessary at the start- and also just .. take away the arm that got transplanted? (games allergic to consequences)

(more stone than sonau but .. i feel like those two are inherently linked anyway)

"enhance" peoples already existing magic abilities- which .. isnt really true? like that sounds like a lie bc except for giant rauru laser he uses only once, no one seems to actually use it like that, speaking of which

giant laserbeams capable of taking out an entire family of moldugas

my point being, like i talked about before, is that all of the other people with stones, we either dont get to see what they can do bc they just get it and are only shown standing around doing nothing giving no example of its effect (old sages) or the new sages creating copies of themselves that they give to you, which i would argue, is not enhancing their abilties, bc their ability is very element specific, not the shiekahs copy game, yes their ghost houses their ability but .. thats not 'enhancing' that just a double- plus, and this drives me mad, THEIR GHOSTS GO AWAY WHEN THE REAL ONE IS AROUND, which defeats even the idea of it being stronger just bc there two of each now, so they get nothing and you get a ghost copy if they arent around themselves which is not something i would call "enhancing" (its so gamey .... it only exists like that so you get shitty companions with those abilities in the game and when they are around dont get double the already shitty way of activating them.. and i hate it, i hate how gamey it is, you can make things work without it feeling THIS gamey)

ooooor, are just a set piece, like sonia, who doesnt use her stone for anything, bc she cant have been too weak on her own to time reverse a single cup of tea now can she (i wouldnt put it past them)

the only other time it seems to work as it was said is with ganondorf, bc he had miasma (gloom ... ) powers before and just kinda .. miasmad himself up more

time travel! somehow!! even though the traveling person has not shown any time powers before that point, has no idea what the stone is or how to use it, and no idea where to go, nor to think of going there even in panic (which is something i would have accepted, like .. idk atreus travel via the marbles in god of war, how he thinks of home and travels to his old home instead of where he meant to go, thats a neat twist!) (also .. sonia is the one whos lived all her life with time powers and, supposedly, acts like a mentor to zelda (if you can count that one scene where she says some vague -cheer up- stuff) .. what if sonia could time travel, bc she actually knew how to use it, and went into the future to warn them or lead them into the right direction .. already thinking of better things again ..)

stones can also turn people into eternal, immortal (lie, you can kill dragondorf) dragons, permanently (also a lie, zelda is reversed, and 'she was just sleeping uwu', stone she ate is ALSO back) (dragons being something i thought of being ethereal, untouchable and timeless sacred beings you shouldnt try to understand or control- but no, sonaus stupid stones can just turn people into them and its only used for one cool set piece and a fake emotional hook, also a shitty way to bring zelda back into the future all fine and dandy bc her learning to control her sudden new time powers well enough to travel back on her own would have been too much agency for our little maiden prize- the whole dragon thing also feel like desecrating dragons to me)

(probably more im forgetting here lol)

in the end, what my problem is that its TOO much and TOO messy, theres no lines and all the rules told to you are proven wrong with no input from you or even hint at it being possible and no logical lines to it

like sure, in botw the shiekah tech and the encient energy is also rather vague, but you get a sense of what it is, its magic that powers their tech! and it doesnt go beyond that (unlike the sonau stuff which is .. both made AND powered by sonanium?? which feels a little ... stupid) and the people sometiems had some elemental magic, like urbosa and her lightning etc in totk its just all over the place, all the things work together in vague ways and seem like they can both do everything and nothing, which leaves you with an unsatisfying confusion and possible frustration (if you are me, who cares too much) instead of a intrigued curiousity (like i had with the ancient energy from botw) that can still feel like you not knowing the answer too doesnt distract from anything, its feels plausible on its own-

... hey, been some time since i got to rant in long form! take everything with a few more grains of salt than usually, i still have covid :/

[ellraiser]

Mudborne - Devlog #02

Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Tumblr to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game

Back To The Drawing Board

So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas:

The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:

As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery.

The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world

Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)

To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.

I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.

===

Lost In A Dream

With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.

With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.

With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.

It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell.

===

Something Old Something New

With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.

Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.

I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)

I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it!

===

Maths For Fun

As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were: - Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn) - Grinder (mushroom = powders) - Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud) - Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole) - Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs) - Bed (skip ahead time)

The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.

The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.

The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds.

"That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks

Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). 

You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...

Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog.

In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. 

===

What Next?

So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LÖVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc

I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. 

The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')

While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to.

I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)

===

As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell

[your-local-pybro]

How do you use this thing?

Hello folks! I'm Jett!

Im the R.E.D's Pyro/Pybro

My brother, Scout, told me about this Tumbler thing so thought I would give it a shot

I don't have much to say than I'm a pyromaniac and uh...I think Sharks are super fucking cool man. I can talk about them all day

Freinds would be nice. It would be cool meeting other people outside my team. No offense to them. I just want to talk to new peaple

So send me some mail. I have a mail box that totally is mine and I didn't steal off someone's front yard.

(Important OOC Notes below the cut!)

Any artwork posted on this blog is mine unless stated otherwise. Might try and draw some for some asks/Rps

Hello folks! I'm the owner of this account! Idk how active il be on this(il try to be active as I can) but My main is @dani-fox (i use He/It) if anyone is wondering and if anyone wants to see my semi-non tf2 account/artwork.

any OOC or Out of character things will be in Red to make things easy but il still use /OOC. I just want to make ooc stuff red to different from things Jett is saying from what im saying.

Here's Jett's ref for a idea on what It looks like

-Rps from Anons, Tf2 CC blogs and other Tf2 ocs are allowed and encouraged

boundaries stuff uhhh

-magic Anons are welcome as well! Just don't let the magic last for to many posts

-I encourage rps! Have fun, rp with Jett!!

-like the first one questions being asked are also encourage. This is ment to be a ask blog after all.

-please no NSFW asks or stuff you wouldn't say to your parents. The owner is a adult but isn't okay with weird asks being sent by random ppl I don't know.

-this isn't 100% cannon. It's slightly based on my headcannons/interpretations on things

-Don't be a power player,write for Jett,or change its story in rps or asks. That's just mean.

That's really it. Hope.you guys enjoy this silly random RP blog!

[sorcerous-caress]

Hi hello I'm back and non-anon (bc I'm not scared anymore lmao), I sent in the star elf/eldarin ask!!

First off, for your influence on my DM work, I table for a party of really really new players, so a lot of them are just starting out as humans for now. To kinda get them further into the realm of exploring different worlds, I built an elf NPC somewhat inspired by your modern AU (but a little bit turned down on the sexual stuff bc I need them to not get distracted lmao), and a lot of your more general posts led me to want to explore the specific customs and practices of different elven groups, which led me down a rabbithole and now I'm trying to piece together dnd lore from the very beginning, like the genetic origins of the current species and stuff. It's been a super fun inquiry, and I have you to thank for inspiring me!!

As for your response to my ask...

DAMN. the Echoes of the Fey concept was SUPER COOL and now I really wanna look into that too bc it could work for some insane roleplay and some neat scenarios. I just love the idea of nonverbal and magical communication bc it has so much potential, and it's even better if it doesn't follow the mechanics of speech and is more based around general emotions or a different quantifying system. It's so fun to explore!!

Also oh my godddd, HUMANS AND HUMAN WORLDS AS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR. My ask was all over the place but you fully caught on to exactly what I was talking about!!! Even beyond the sexual side, there's something so intimate and beautiful about removing your "higher" level methods of communication for a raw, gritty ability to just feel. The idea of essentially letting down all of those magical concepts that are inherently emotional and having to go it alone and figure it all out physically is just so, UGH. There's something there but I don't have the words to explain it (but you did, and I'm so glad you get where I'm coming from)

But yeah there's so much to explore there and I love it so much

Love ya 💜💜

I love ya too!! 🩷🩷

Also omfg using the human infatuated modern elf as a guide for your new players is a genius move.

Like this one loser high elf with a respectful facade who is just so obsessed over humans that the second they see a gaggle of new human adventure waddling around like ducks, looking at everything with shiny eyes, the elf takes an emergency holiday from their high paying job and goes to the humans.

Imagine all the pep talk they'd give themselves.

"Okay okay we got this!! We got this! We practised this before in the mirror.

All you have to do is walk up to them and introduce yourself yes yes, mention that you're a high elf and throw some elvish words around, humans love these right?

Do NOT mention the porn and do NOT ask to touch their ears no matter how adorable and tempting they look to squeeze-well maybe...if the human is willing and it's not weird right? They'd allow me to touch their ears if I asked nicely so maybe-

NO-NO NO NO. no touching ears, stay focused for Corellon's sake! It is my job to guide humans after all, yes? All those stories you read of elves guiding humanity weren't just fantasy, if the elves don't look after the humans then who will? The dwarves? HA, as if."

Then they walk up to them, pretending to be all graceful and noble like.

"Ehem! Aethen, uh, humans, right? Isee that your kind is still as lost as ever. Maethe you are in need of a guide, yes? "

They'd also be a bit protective of them, especially around other elves who call humans biir aka garbage. Having an entire argument with the other person in elvish and insulting their entire lineage before turning to the humans like nothing happened and asking if they'd like to go to a tavern? The elf's treat.

Also this elf's whole education about humans came from the Internet and half of it is misinformation. Somehow they know the most niche of medical facts about humans yet lack knowledge about the most basic things.

This is just me talking about my modern human kink high elf. Your npc was just inspired by them so I'm not expecting them to act the same or have the same concept, still this was a fun idea!

And Aaaa thank you so much <3333 you're so kind. This praise is going straight to my heart and making it bigger. Feel free to drop by anytime and share any of your human kink idea or even knowledge about elves!

Rn I'm reading about the human age boom in the forgotten realms, it is kinda interesting to think about a time where humans were far and between before literally ruling over the earth in the span of thousands of years.

[panzerkatzee]

Update - Squirrel Brains, Meds and Magic

Sooo... where were we? Ah yes... life update, because writing stuff helps me process things and writing just for me feels kinda pointless.

CW: Mention of ADHD Meds, dependence on meds, medication withdrawal

So I just came out of a very weird phase.. like extra weird. Why you ask? Well.... after having teeth surgery on the twelfth of December, I deemed it a splendid idea to just.. carry my heavily regulated ADHD medication in my backpack.. and for a reason yet unknown and hopefully as meneial as... it fell from my pack and is lost somehwere in my room, I lost it. As it is heavily regulated and my psychiatrist deems it a "non essential" drug for me to cope, I spent the last nine days without it.

Which was... better than anticipated, yet still shit af.

I tried my best... and I had only one really bad day, luckily the rest were filled with Christmas stuff and my family being surprisingly supportive. Also.. I gave in to the temptation and installed Conan Exiles once more... my one biggest addiction ever. It might have been a very stupid choice or a decent one as it did help me to cope and is without consequence at the moment.

It also provided me with the chance to reconnect to some old friends I met while playing the game, which is exceptionally nice... and discover all the great new cosmetics the modders included soo double yay.

Luckily, yesterday I managed to get my prescription renewed from my doctors christmas substitute and as of today, I am back on the meds. It is... a fucking relief. Because I can finally sort through my thoughts, cope with sensations and centre myself once more. Something I struggle with a lot, when off meds.

Sometimes it becomes really hard to string together a complete sentence and the inability to do so... is excruciating for me.

Also it's absolutely essential from real self regulation. I did notice, even off the meds I had a better time at clamping down on my impulsivity.. but of all the intractions I had over the last nine days, the only one that didn't completely stress me out, was that with my best friend yesterday, where I knew I didn't have to mask (as much).

I even managed to meet my daily writing goal today, which is a nice bonus. Not that I am specifically working on any projects right now, but I actually started working on a fantasy story two days before my meds went out... and I plan on continuing on it.

It combines a character from a previous story, I started as a self-care project during NaNoWriMo with a world I started to create more than... 12 years ago.

It is a new take on the story I had actually planned, and we'll see how it turns out!

A small snippet for you, should you be curious now..~

Fjinna swore, she would shit herself any moment. Ever since sitting down at her table, the shrewd eyes of her newest opponent, had not left her. Pale, glinting like the Northern Peaks at sunrise and cold as the Eternal Glaciers, these eyes bore into her like darts thrown from a decisive hand. They did not stare, no, they seemed to flit about, but never so far that the fairhaired girl left their field of vision. By now, the avid dice player of interest was suspecting the reason for the sudden appearance. When the lady in the run down gown had sat down, she had been knees deep immersed in time-magic, profiting of the fact, that here in the Lower Rungs, no one knew shit about real magic. Only the crude Elementalism, the Legion practiced, and as Fjin wasn't trying to blow, burn, wash or push the dice, they had no idea, how she was actually manipulating the game. Looking at the glimpses of future, to know how the dice would fall. Something she did every other round, so the other players or the dice boy, wouldn't get suspicious. The woman couldn’t have been drawn by her stark white hair, now neatly tucked beneath a slightly rumpled but rather realistic wig, marking her as a daughter of the Emerald Banks, instead of the Isenfjrode. Especially paired with the pallid skin and assortment of freckles dusting her cheeks. The rest of her was as unremarkable as they come… rancid coat, rancid shirt and a pair of very nice breeches, she nabbed during one of her travels topside during the last dead night. When the moon wasn’t peering down with her baleful glare. So instead of fretting further, she fixed the woman in her best “This city shat me out so better don’t mess with me, asshole!”- stares and asked in the rough, slightly deeper voice she had picked up in this place: “Do I ‘ave sum’thin’ on me face or do we ‘ave a prublem Missy?” A thinly plucked eyebrow rose at the Sludge drawl and her head cocked ever so slightly. “No, not at all, your face is quite… pristine. Or at least in this environment I would call it that.” She scoffed, while noting her guess. The hairs on Fjinnas neck immediately stood on end. Magic… close. It was an effort not to gape at the woman, something she wouldn’t have managed, before coming here. That bitch… Her eyes quickly moved to her opponents hair, black, not too dark. Her eyes… they were… was she? “Ohh look at that… it seems like… great minds do think alike.” The lady chimed, really pushing the topside dialect she spoke in, eyes still on Fjinna. “I wonder, what else they could.. come up with..” Some of the other players now looked about them, confused, some brows were raised. “Cash out…” she hurriedly blurted, when she felt the tug. Not on her body or her mind… but on her soul. That stinging, ripping HE had been so proficient at, as the Eshari across from her tried to subdue her magic, chain her very soul.

[serpentinegraphite]

AD&D for Stranger Things

it’s time for a PSA on some basics both for accuracy and because some of these rules are fucking weird to modern d&d players, and the fandom is missing out on not knowing about them.

Advantage/Disadvantage is a mechanic that didn’t show up until 5e (the system most D&D streaming shows use).

THAC0 - stands for “to hit Armor Class 0.” current editions of D&D use a higher AC to make players harder to hit, but for 2e, smaller numbers were better. (2e is the system for OG Baldur’s Gate, so new players just getting to the remakes often find this confusing)

THAC0 required a shitton of math, so it wasn’t uncommon for groups to just make a fucking chart instead of doing the calculations every time.

Ability checks were mostly house ruled until literally 1986, but the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide just picked up the most common house rule, which was to roll a D20 and hope the number was smaller than your ability score (so a nat 20 in this case would be an automatic failure)

There wasn’t a universal list of skills (like Persuasion or Sleight of Hand), but there were still rules to allow for “non-weapon proficiencies” (highly customizable based on your setting) again, a mechanic that was heavily streamlined by 5e

the rules mostly encouraged players to be very specific in their RP and the DM to decide if this action would work or not (but e.g., if your character has a lot more charisma than you do, a skill check might be more manageable than trying to improv a persuasive speech)

as a result, at this time there aren’t really any spells in the core materials for enhancing ability (e.g., Guidance)

weapon proficiencies were very specific. e.g., limited by class and level and things like that.

There’s a popular text post about clerics only being allowed to use blunt weapons, and that would apply to this era

Druid was a subclass of cleric, and ranger was a subclass of fighter.

you couldn’t just be a bard, you had to earn that shit. it was also so broken that it was often banned under various house rules and included in the appendix as an optional class

to be a bard, you had to start as a fighter until at least level 5, multiclass into thief, and then multiclass into druid.

one of the most well-known D&D settings is the Forgotten Realms, but those actually didn’t come out until 1987

psionics - there was an appendix in the AD&D player’s handbook for optionally giving characters psionic abilities (psychic powers instead of magic), which would probably be more analogous to El’s abilities

This obviously isn’t everything, it’s just the stuff I see most often/the stuff I think is most interesting, and this post is only about core materials (supplemental books or zines might have other rules that override these!). Of course, any rule you don’t like can be handwaved with “house rules” because D&D is a game that encourages tailoring your experience to fit your party.

If you’re as insufferable as me about getting little details correct when writing, it’s super easy to find PDFs of the AD&D books with like google.

note: all the rules I’m looking at are specific to 1986 because I mostly researched only within current canon timeline.

[hugintheraven]

Because I see this sentiment a lot:

So, TES is a video game series. Open-world fantasy. That’s the simple part. Thing is, because it’s been around since the 90′s and subject to a lot of lore and feature creep, there’s a LOT of random BS magic floating around in the history. That’s where comments like “The PC in TES3 being able to save and load the game is canon”, “khajiit are a sapient race that includes everything from housecats to the full spectrum of furry art”, or “elves are actually interdimensional demons brought to our world and they’re trying to destroy it in order to go home” come from, they’re players or devs patching inconsistencies between games or setting up lore for various purposes. And the older games were not afraid of getting weird with it, which has carried forward to influence the games today. 

But the games are kind of unique to the genre of open-world RPGs in that they have meh story but let you do a lot of different things, so fans kind of build their own experience even before mods get involved. There’s jokes about ignoring the main quest because it’s truly not the point. You can ignore it completely without issue, and many people do. But doing that and building your own experience means that when one player is talking about their game where they married a beggar and turned him into a major political power, it’s unclear unless someone is very knowledgeable exactly what parts of that are headcanon, which are mods, and which are the player exploiting various existing systems for their own purposes. 

The games are also extremely modable. And they have to be, they’re glitchy as hell without fan-made mods. But needing the Unofficial Patch means that most players on PC learn how to download mods, which means that some other fixes are relatively common.*

And players not really having other options to play means that we have to put up with stuff that would be dealbreakers in other games(severe glitches, shallow content, etc), but that also means that stuff gets discussed to death because it’s such a glaring issue. Combine with no new releases in over a decade, just the same game with more DLC on every platform in existence, and you can see why fans are getting stircrazy. But the more people dig into the games looking for new stuff to talk about, the more people figure out that really makes no sense, thereby confusing everyone who doesn’t follow the lore of these games excessively. 

*That’s what the above is referencing, Serena(vampire female DLC companion shown above) is non-romanceable in the base game. Many players dislike this and have downloaded a mod to make her into a love interest, with or without a NSFW option. Other people dislike this for ethical reasons. Her dad is an asshole villain(but also someone certain people want to call Daddy) so KS is going to mod the game to put him in a sexualized outfit instead of doing anything to Serena.

[xtinak-rules]

No one is going to read this, but these are some player-facing notes I have for the open-table version of Caverns of Thracia I started a few months ago and am picking back up games for. I’ve been struggling with a few issues in playing a game based on ancient greece, mostly with how ancient greek and classic cultures are often related to white supremacy and how already how fash-y some part of the OSR are. There’s stuff I want to use from older school rpgs and a lot of shit I want to avoid, especially since I want my games to be welcoming to people besides just white cis men.

the rough campaign notes:

- takes place in s small chunk of a larger world (that’s not defined yet outside of the area around the dungeon)

- black and brown people plenty (includes non-humans), it not being something that needs to be defined into each culture (like this one being a white one, this one being bronze, etc). Elves, dwarves, gnomes, should be various colors too.

- Lots of gay, ace, aromatic, queer, polyamorous, het, trans people

- I want their to be shitty groups that are somewhat inspired on real shitty groups, but with problems that are scoped to something that’s not racism, sexism, or against real life group. Like they might hate sex and masturbation, but they aren’t going to be racist, sexist, or antisemitic.

- There are slavers and they are free to be murdered

- “Monsterous” races are still people (I should make beastmen and lizardfolk playable, if rare possibly)

- Going to use greek mythology, but not in a racist/classic way. The gods don’t come down and talk to people like in greek myth, they are as distant as the gods in our world. Myths abound (and might be recontextualzed to fit in the setting ). Going to try to seperate out the ideas of civic religion and household religions and vary the gods in each region. There is possibly a whole witch kingdom who’s really into Hekate also.

- I’m not at all an expert of ancient greek myth and have just picked up a bit for this game

- clerics don’t dedicate themselves to a specific deity, as that seems weird to polytheistic society. I have an alternative magic system that I was toying with and may bring out later.

- I think the ideas of greek mysteries and the general concept of heresies to be interesting, so anticipate seeing that kind of junk

[thegiftofgabes]

Violently Harmless Magic

See the original post on dice.camp

Here's a thing that seems to be a classic magic fantasy trope: consent-breaking and forceful control magic.

Spells that :

force or impede another being from acting in any or all capacity through manipulating their body or mind

change their body in any sense

invade, change, or take control of their thoughts, senses, memories or emotions

I have always felt weirded out by them and could never put a finger on why until I figured that they are violent.

Not only they are violent but they also are forms of violence that are easy to dismiss or even gaslight other users (or their victims) into believing they are just "tricks", because they might not often shed a single drop of anyone's blood.

Even when some spells say you can "only command a creature to do something that won't put them in harm's way", makes it seem that the spell itself is not harmful, harm is only done if they get physically hurt.

And here's another thought: obvious violence in role playing games is often abstracted in ways that remove the player from the gravity of those actions - you roll to attack and deal some points of damage and stuff and maybe cause some sort of ailment. Even videogames allow you to just press a button to attack something and convert that in a number operation.

But when it comes to those types of magic, they don't even need to be that abstracted: we seem to not consider them as unpleasant as blood and gore, we don't seem to shy away from the bodily horror of having life violently snuffed out of an individual.

Mind magic is usually invisible, if not in its production, then at least in its effect. Restricting or stripping off bits of someone's agency or identity invisibly is not as obviously unpleasant and painful, and "look, no one died, see?"

Then things such as taking control of someone's body, from freezing their movements to changing their form is not either such an unpleasant sight. You turn another person into an animal, or a chair, and that's considered just funny, because it seems it's "ridiculous at worse".

And yet a mage is yanking someone's own body away from them.

There are some discussions out there for curating spell lists, allowing/unallowing some, or changing them in some ways and I feel that that is more of a symptom of the problem than an actual solution.

This content keeps getting printed and reprinted as harmless, nice non-violent alternatives to killing when in fact they are in themselves a form of violence, but text, lore, and mechanics hardly if ever make their violence explicit.

Ironically the wizard school terf was onto something when she posed the body domination spell as evil, but it never went beyond that, ambiguously posing it as something awesome and nigh desirable, you know, evil against evil style.

And then there is another type of magic: soul manipulation. Stuff like binding, consuming, locking or summoning souls.

This one gets trickier in some aspects as being a lot more metaphysical, but there is one thing that is pretty objective to me:

Your soul is nearly always meant to represent the non-corporeal part of your being without which you cannot be you.

So what happens when you get to bind someone's soul onto an object? Or summon it, or misplace it, or even attack it?

Here we enter in the realm of fates worse than death.

I can't tell about older editions of the dragon game, but the current edition allows you to ressurrect a person only if their soul consents.

Why are we not making it explicit in other spells that consent is involved somehow, or even that it is breached?

I am not explicitly advocating for the absolute removal of this type of magic from media. But I do wish that when they are incorporated in ttrpg games they are represented for what they really are, and even bring a narrative and mechanical harmony to how they are used and how they change the world around you, including the perceptions of others, rules, beliefs and so on.

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Overworld Mobs Were a Mistake

In a lot of fantasy games there's the concept of the Overworld Mob. We'll just ignore the weirdness of singular units being referred to as "mobs" in MMO spaces. Language evolves. This is a creature that has a place in the terrain; Some are entirely stationary, many have a range - essentially their territory - with their walk-around animations having random directions but those random rolls taking in info about how far they are from their home point, and a rare few even have a specified migration cycle, where the "home point" in question itself moves around the zone. A lot of overworld boss monsters in older MMOs were fully random, basically walking around wherever they wanted within the full breadth of a zone (sometimes with "safe zones" for PCs carved out; things like hidden camps, or major cities the monster wasn't willing to assault).

Generally an overworld mob post-2000 has a pretty fast respawn cycle unless it's a major boss. Few games these days have a zone that can be emptied of wildlife by a determined murder-hobo with too many levels. There's some interesting design stuff to consider about respawn duration, because you want it fast enough that a jerk can't make everyone else unable to do "slay 4 wompus birds" quests but not so fast that the one you just killed respawns immediately; That breaks immersion and really undercuts any quests about killing monsters specifically to control population.

So. City of Heroes.

On the one hand there's a piece of the fantasy that involves leaping rooftop-to-rooftop and seeing a mugging in process down at street level and flying into action. On the other, there's the above immersion-break that these interchangeable supernatural gangsters are immediately back to mugging someone on the same street corner you just arrested them from. I can imagine the mechanic's defenders saying this parallels how Batman has ended up having several stories about getting discouraged by the fact that Gotham never seems to actually clean up with all the work he does. But it doesn't feel the same.

Also, the game just doesn't play out that way. The reality is the overworld mobs of City of Heroes end up being more related to old concepts of zone progression; a kind of "you must be this tall to ride" system that stops the level 5 characters from walking around the level 50 zones.

The problem with that, of course, is that in City of Heroes most of the "level 50 zones" are still inside a civilized city. There's something wonky about a game where Plainclothes Bob can walk down the street past the weirdo space-nazis or the magic soul-stealers and they don't harass him, but if you make a superhero named Plainclothes Bob and make him look just like the other citizens and walk around, they will pick you out of a crowd and they will murder you the second you walk into the wrong zone.

Regular overworld mobs are deeply outdated. They're the most rote and paint-by-numbers part of almost every MMO. They're usually the least interesting encounter type. In games with standard traversal - Diablo 4, for instance, has teleportation to cities you've visited, and other than that you're on foot or horseback - overworld enemies are meant to keep the player on their toes and give them something to do between story beats, maybe also stress how the corruption of whatever evil besets the land needs to be pushed back by your heroic deeds.

But in a game with lots of nonstandard traversal - Spider-Man, for instance, or City of Heroes - the whole game makes a lot more sense if you have no Overworld Mobs, per se, but rather a series of events. A Mugging. A Drug Deal. A Dark Rite. A Bank Robbery.

Basically I think CoH - or some new version that tries to fill its shoes, if anyone makes the attempt after Champions' failure - should have something more like the FATEs you see in FFXIV...and then not have overworld mobs at all, outside of those events. We've got the processing power now to include a bunch of non-monster characters at street level to make the city feel lived-in. CoH already had the system where most of the content was instanced; players entering a warehouse or skyscraper through a clicked door, or clicking on a helicopter to be carried to a forest somewhere near town. And running around killing random goons is the least interesting part of an MMO. This is even true when they tie it into the plot.

[mr-ribbit]

hi there gt here don't mind if I peek in.....

as someone that's played blood on the clocktower a lot, particularly with people that claim they don't roleplay well/much, it's definitely a roleplaying game. the fact that botc only really functions as anything else than a logic puzzle cube if you go into your mind palace and start absorbing some kind of a persona makes that distinction really clear to me. if you don't do any element of rping, botc isn't any more fun than playing guess who or reading a script for botc and puzzling it out by yourself. you have to take on some element of being "not yourself" and playing in the fictional space the game lays out, otherwise all the fun elements of people dying and being ghosts and being the secret mayor or etc don't really mean anything

I really agree tho that almost any board game can feel like a tabletop rpg that just has more of a physical component aspect to it. like healed says, I think if u play almost /any/ board game this becomes true to an extent, ESPECIALLY social deduction games. if u like social deduction board games that really clearly encourage roleplaying you could play spyfall or deception: murder in Hong Kong. both are really fun imo and simpler to set up (mostly see: requires fewer players) and offer a lot of crutches for players who want an excuse to get out of their comfort zone of "not rping" in a board game

non social deduction games that I really like that feel easy to treat like a tabletop rp tend to be some of the most mechanically "board gamey" or obtuse games that I play, like twilight imperium and the dune board game. both are high strategy long campaign war games, which feels Not Roleplayish, but the fact that you all play highly different factions with their own characterized unique mechanics and background lore immediately makes it fun to get into the space of playing a "character" and making choices w your 4-8 friends around the table as if you're all at each other's throats or making backhanded alliances or tricky trades and such. In both games I've played sessions where half the table picked "bad" factions or made weird strategy choices that guarantee they won't win, all because they're trying something funny and in character. for example my favorite twilight imperium faction is defined pretty much only by having one of the Biggest Scariest ship in the game when the game starts, and being able to float around threatening people with it until someone eventually comes and kicks your ass. It's really not a good strategy but it's fucking funny and it usually makes me have a lot of fun rping

Other less heavy games that feel ttrpg-y (if you just want recs or examples) Root, where each player has asymmetric abilities and you're all little woodland creatures having a war in the woods, or Escape the Dark Castle, a card based gothic horror game that replicates the feeling of a dungeon crawl really well and thus is easy to rp around, or even tableau builders like Arc Nova, a zoo tycoon board.game where it's fairly isolated gameplay but you get to make a little zoo and pick little zoo guys to go into it and characterize all the stuff you put in the zoo. I've had emotional finally-getting-the-penguin-enclosure based narratives in Arc Nova that felt more impactful to me than many d&d sessions

my wife also loves calling the magic the gathering format of edh/commander a tabletop rpg bc the way we play is highly Roleplayish. Everyone builds decks around a highly characterized card and when playing, that tends to come out expressively enough in everyone's play that it's hard Not to say shit like "ouughhuhgh don't attack me man I'm the kraken guy. I'll come out of the ocean and get ya" and then make my grown adult friends play along with kraken guy until they get to go home

also if u want a board game you can also play solo or with a group that feels literally like an rpg, legacy for dragonholt is an rpg with literally a big story book of rp prompts and a narrative campaign you choose your way through while playing on a very simple board to keep track of stats. The story and characters is really charming and definitely will appeal to you if you want to feel like ur playing a dmless rpg. The Choose Your Own Adventure official board games also scratch this itch and are surprisingly fun if you embrace their absurd premises.

Ooooh also FOG OF LOVE! IS REALLY RPG-LIKE it's a game about LOVE where u play two characters in a romance and there's a million narrative card decks and scenarios that gameify going through the ups and downs of a turbulent love story. It has you make little characters with likes and dislikes and Secrets you reveal and such and it's very good if you want to literally rp out a ship with someone.

tldr sorry for stepping in but I love board games I love rping I've been rping in board games for years and if your botc group doesn't agree then they are lame also if you want more game recs I have more

do you consider social deduction games (like blood on the clocktower) to be a type of tabletop roleplaying game? if so do you know games that are tabletop roleplaying games but that aren't like RPGs?

[writingforatwistedworld]

Yahoo the inbox is open! May I ask for a Savanaclaw members reacting to finding out the player already has an so. Like the ones you did for the Octavinelle dorm. Thank you. 💖 also ahhh I just really love your stuff here!! It amazing!!

You ask and you shall receive. Also thanks for the compliment! It means a lot to me! :D

Self-aware au

I do not take any responsibility for you reading this no matter which age group you are from!

WARNINGS: Yandere themes, violence, blood, beheading, obsession, possessiveness, murder, death

Leona Kingscholar/Ruggie Bucchi/Jack Howl-Player already has a significant other

I bet with you that Ruggie sharpens his nails. Why that is important? You will see...

So, Leona was just on the home screen, enjoying the sight of you, expecting to see your face once more...

And then there is them

Sitting just across the room, asking who “the heck is that weird looking character on the screen?”

Insult him, and you get a warning. Insult the Overseers hobbies and preferences and you will end up headless

You see where I was going with that sharpened nail thingy?

But knowing that you have a partner burns really bad

Leona is aware that he is everything else but that prince on the white horse

Heck, the horse would rather run away from him than let him ride on it

But he had hope

After all, the Overseer sees everyone equally and when you put him on the home screen on that day he thought that maybe he had caught your fancy somehow

And now he is watching how some stranger is embracing you, being way too close to you

They can be happy that you are in the room

He just wants to be somewhat decent for you

Otherwise he would have just ripped them to shreds, worlds apart or not

One word: laughing

No joke, when... they were seen by him for the first time he couldn't help but to laugh

He is just in complete denial

You see, Ruggie had always looked up to you

The kind, otherworldly being who made sure that even the despised hyenas had a chance

He even thought that you two could get along, you being free of prejudices about the lower class and all of that

When he saw them being closed to you than a normal friend would usually be he finally snaps out of denial

You two are in a relationship... oh Overseer, you are too cruel!

He really thought that what you two had was special after you placed him on the home screen

And all of the sayings, with you being equal and all of that, seemed true as well!

And then he finds out that he had no chance anyways

He just wants to use his special magic on them, make them fall down some stairs

Ruggie wants to see them bleed, cry, beg for forgiveness even if they don't know for what

He had to live such a difficult life and knew nothing else

He even looked after his family unlike so many young people in the slums who only cared about themselves

So please indulge him just for once, even if that means finding your special one in an accident which left them bloody and in a coma

Oh goodness! This is a harsh one...

From the second he spots them for the first time besides you he is agressive

It's almost like Jack threatens your significant other for just existing

Now, luckily he can't act upon the instinct to go for their jugular

You two are still separated by worlds after all

So what does he do? Huh? Let his anger out in a healthy, non-dangerous way?

Good job but no, he is extremely aggressive and dangerous during spell drive training

He has already send three freshmen into the nurse's office

Leona even had to take him off the team with how dangerous he has become

So now that this way of getting rid of anger is gone what is he supposed to do? Stand still and do nothing??!

Oh no no no. He would rather die

So suddenly the usually calm and collected student is gone, replaced with an aggressive copy of himself

All I'm saying is, is that there are more than enough students in Savannaclaw searching for trouble and who is he to deny them that?

Everyone knows that you recently visited when they see a new face in the nurses office

Jack had never been so alone, avoided by everyone

But then again, who cares if they are not you? And if someone dares to come close enough then they surely offer themselves as a punching bag, right?

[thecreaturecodex]

Creature Codex 2022 Survey Results!

So the turnout for the survey was great! 136 responses on the Google form, but a few people sending asks. I’m not going to post all of it, but I would like to go over some highlights.

Also, to reassure folks: this was not intended as a lead in to major changes on the Codex. I’m still going to be writing monsters for PF1e, and the basic format isn’t going to change. But I wanted to see what folks were interested in.

I was honestly surprised by this result--I was under the impression that the art was a bigger draw to when and why people liked or reblogged my entries. But it’s the smallest result! Flavor text and background info are about evenly matched.

A lot of people had write ins for what RPGs they had played, and what they were currently playing. This was by design; I wanted to focus my options on D&D and Pathfinder variations, because there’s hundreds of different RPGs out there, and this is a Pathfinder 1e blog. There was a huge diversity of games represented, including some I’ve never heard of (Genesys, Lancer), games I didn’t know people still played (Mongoose Traveler, AD&D 2e and D&D 4e), and some games I had forgotten existed (Maid RPG). Notably, the most common game still being played was Pathfinder 1e, with 58 of 133 responses confirming. Followed by D&D 5e, with 56/133. I know there’s a certain amount of self-selection here because this is a Pathfinder 1e blog, but I was pleasantly surprised to see PF1e still so popular.

Unsurprised to see a majority of my voting followers do at least some GMing. And welcome, my 10% of non-playing followers! Glad you’re enjoying yourselves.

I got a number of write-ins for themes people wanted to see me cover. More people voted on what they liked than what they didn’t, and even for things that got a decent number of Do Not Want (Hackmaster and Starfinder were the top two there), there were more people who voted for them. I’ve recently done Hackmaster and Starfinder blocks, so I’m happy to leave them alone for a while.

Now, let’s look at creature types:

You guys like them weird! Aberrations are the clear winner here at 60%, but outsiders (52%) and magical beasts (43%) are no slouches either.

Not a good day to be an ooze or a vermin, it seems. Those types do have some limitations based on the PF1e rules set, so that makes a certain amount of sense. And tells me that an ooze or vermin theme block would not be a big hit. Which is useful information!

Again, useful information. I haven’t posted any playable races in a while, but have a prospect or two in mind. 

The overwhelming enjoyment of historical context is why I reblogged that tarasque folk art post. If you’re looking for book reviews, I’ve been posting those to my “main” blog that has far fewer followers, @demiurge1138. 

This post is probably long enough, but I do want to respond to some of the individual comments. In the interests of not completely destroying your dashboards, I’m gonna put my thoughts under the cut.

All of the comments I got were very nice! Thank you all so much!

Some to respond to:

i literally adore Creature Codex and i think you are perfect, i enjoy any content you feel like sharing and also i would kill a man to be able have a chance to play a tabletop rpg with you. :)

That's very flattering! And slightly intimidating!

Ran the spiral centurion for my party a couple of weeks back; it was well received, and they almost-but-not-quite figured they could just shove the thing over. There's a good chance they'll run into a blue slime next session.

I love this blog! It's very helpful. Right now, my players are interacting with Howler Wasps. They haven't gotten to the nest yet, but one player skinned one and made an outfit out of it. This weekend, they traded that outfit for future "favors". None of that would have happened without you.

I love your stuff! You've turned me on to a bunch of golarion lore, like mahadatari (technically starfinder but hush), the daemons, and qlippoth! I don't engage with your stuff as much as I should (in the social media sense), but I adore the blog in general. I'll fully out myself and say I'm monsterceiling! I actually took some of your advice to make a mahadatari build for Iron gods. She was a magus kasatha, but she died at the end of book one and came back as a duskwalker. I rebuilt her as a phantom blade/brawler with the (minor spoilers) juju zombie kasatha under torch as her phantom. She's currently spreading the gospel of Talavet across numeria!

I love hearing stories about how people are using my monsters at the table! I’d be happy to get those anytime.

I personally find Pathfinder too complicated; I enjoy CreatureCodex as a way to better understand the game without playing it and to see monsters from folklore I've not heard of before (and see new interpretations of ones I have!)

I enjoy all of your work with the Creature Codex, and it makes me want to try the Pathfinder system. I love the care and attention to detail that goes into each entry!

I’m glad I can help make the Pathfinder system somewhat more navigable. 

 I'm tempted to do something like the creature codex, but for Starfinder conversions. Any advice?

Develop a schedule. It doesn’t have to be near daily like my blog (for your sanity, it probably shouldn't be), but having a plan in mind for when to post definitely helps me manage workload. If you’re using tumblr, make use of the queue function; it’s one of the most helpful features of the site. And manage your expectations about engagement. Obviously, engagement helps me feel motivated and makes me feel good, but it takes a long time to get going, and the current culture of the internet makes it less common than it was even ~5 years ago (like when I started). 

I am curious to know why you write "mind-influencing effect" instead of "mind-affecting effect". Just a pet peeve of mine. I really like your work and I want to thank you for it.

It’s a 3.5ism. I feel like “mind-affecting effect” is a clunky bit of English. There’s some other formatting quirks I do that differ from Paizo’s official stat format; I put the Perception score alphabetically among the Senses instead of separating it out from darkvision, low light, etc. And I put Defensive Abilities in their own line instead of mixing them with DR, Immune, Resist and SR. 

Keep up the good work! I enjoy your blog immensely. End of the World week, in particular, was a favorite series of mine.

Thanks, but that wasn’t me. That was @monstersdownthepath​ who did End of the World Week. I have converted a bunch of those monsters, though. Check the “elder evils” tag. 

I do not play pathfinder myself, but have you considered creating a tag for Slaad Lords, Asura Rana, Empyreal Lords, etc (I think the term for them is demigods)? A player who wants to make a cleric of one of your monsters would have an easier time looking through the database if you marked which pages would be relevant for that.

That is an excellent idea. I haven’t gone back through my old posts and added “demigod” as a tag, but I will do so in the Not Too Distant Future. Thanks!

[dailyadventureprompts]

Could yo post your "Hag Reimagined" post separately from the long line of reblogs, please? I don't like to be remembered the awkward lore behind the original monster.

MONSTERS REIMAGINED: Hags Hagga

(here’s the original context for anyone who might be wondering, it’s a doozy) 

The problem: Hags are weird in that at some point during d&d’s development, someone decided that their version of fairy tale witches were going to be monsters in and of themselves, rather than just humanoids with magical talent and a mean-streak. What’s more, they decided that these monsters were not only going to be grimm fairy tale witches, but also the “burn at the stake for consorting with the devil” Salem sort of witches, and would actually be guilty of all the gross stuff the Salem witches were accused of ( kidnapping children, consorting with demons, laying random curses etc)  

Guess what friends? just like a lot of d&d’s OTHER super gross history when it comes to supplying us monsters to slaughter, it ended up using a grabbag of historical justifications for actual genocide, in this case: The blood libel/church propaganda against paganism/midwifery. it looks like in trying to come up with a folklore adherent explanation for a magical creature’s diet/breeding habits, the designers ended up propagating centuries old  antisemitism…..

YIKES

so how do we fix this? how do we separate the iconic wheat of the hag’s iconography from the culturally uncomfortable chaff?  I’ve got a few ideas, and I think they’ll satisfy everyone.

The Parts worth Keeping:

Part of the reason the Hag makes such an Iconic monster is because we ALL know what a witch is. Its burned into our psyche at every level of pop culture from before we’re old enough to read. As children we’re always a little afraid of the arbitrary nature of adults, so when a story revolves around an old person who kidnaps you and forces you to do chores under threat of baking you into a pie, there’s a part of us that goes:  “ yeah…. that’s not that much of a stretch”

What’s more, the accessories of wichcraft make a BALLER villainous aesthetic, decrepit hovels in the roots of trees or hidden in sea-caves and crumbling towers, “bubble bubble, toil and trouble” over cauldrons full of elixirs, half-feral familiars, animated household items, handwritten books of spells and greasy candles of dubious origin. These things snap easily into the mind of any player, far easier than the aesthetics lot of other “unique” d&d baddies.  ,  

Narratively and from a gameplay perspective, Hags are incredibly useful as they provide a means by which minor villains ( corrupt nobles, bandits, scorned townsfolk) can access magic without bringing in a high level caster.  Hags pull heavy lifting because they a) make deals which can be untangled by the party b) make chaos happen because of those deals, further adding to the adventure.

The Parts worth tossing out:

Why after all this time do we still have monsters that are defined by sex? Almost always these monsters are said to have very rape-y breeding practices ( hags were guilty of this prior to the current edition), and the distinction is seldom used for anything more than specifically gendered horror. Lets get some man-witches and non-binary crones up in here.

Extending off of that, the name “hag” has to go, especially because it’s a term for actual people. Instead lets try to give them a name more suited to the general role in the world.

“Birth horror” is not something most people I know what to deal with, so I don’t see why it should be a part of a mainline d&d monster.

As always, we want to remove the “born evil” trope wherever possible. Hags are fey in the latest editions, but for some reason the developers decided to highlight how they propagate instead of going with the “they emerge spontaneously from mature” angle that the game has adopted for most fairykind. These creatures now show up whenever you’d expect one of them to live, especially if there are already rumors circulating about there being a spellcaster of monsterous mein/deed in that location. Every child can easily spot abandoned buildings/liminal spaces where witches COULD live, so why not have them spontaneously manifest there? 

My Fix:

First lets deal with the name, given we want to preserve the feel/meaning of the name, but also be inclusive,  for the time being lets call them Hagga ( which is old norse, root-word of “hag”, meaning to cut”), or something else unflattering. You may also want to use “Strix”, an archaic greek mythological representation of witches that also might have to do with their conception of owls/bats 

Second: anyone can be a Hagga, rather than being nature spirits or fey themselves, they are mortals that have become beholden to/transformed by the fey. The process can be done in any manner of ways for any manner of reasons, blessing or punishment or arbitrary gift….   Think of it almost like the feywild’s version of lichdom, granting great power, but at great cost.

The process irrevocably warps the would be-Hagga, specifically stripping away the parts of them they valued: Those young and strong become old and wizened, those who valued love and family become callous and spiteful, and those clever and witty become fanciful and mad.

This transformation creates a totemic object representing what the Hagga has lost, usually this defaults into the possession of the fey that initiated the change.   Lost youth may be represented by a flower, a heart full of kindness may be replaced with one of stone,  a hagga who goes mad may literally lose their marbles.

If these items are ever restored to the Hagga, their transformation reverses. This can give even more gameplay opportunities involving discovering the object, recovering it from its owner, and then tricking the Hagga into receiving it as part of a gift, thereby taking ownership of their lost pieces and undoing their deal with the fey.

If you really wanted to, you can still have Hagga go after children in order to make more of themselves, but the result is a magically empowered child who may be willing or unwilling to reclaim their lost goodness, rather than a description of a weird vorebirthing ritual that’ll have your players looking at you funny.

Another fun alternative, Since fey are creatures of fairytales, have a Hagga spontaneously manifest in response to the fears of a populace, catering to their particular crisis and cultural taboos. This gives a great reason for the Hagga to appear in far off wilderness or in creepy attic spaces, and to have them act out petty cruelties against the populace. They literally made the Hagga up to scare and torment them, and the feywild has responded by making their stories real.  In this instance, the Hagga-bane item is something the party would need to concoct themselves, weaving it into the story if none existed before. 

Art

[varteeny1234]

thank you @fagdykegtws and @3000-200-grains-of-salt for your support here's 1.2k words of ninjaslap crackfic for you :D

ao3 link

Once upon a time Etho Slab was minding his own business peacefully in his singleplayer world when he realized he was lonely. He hadn't had anyone to talk to in a while and while he didn't want to invite anyone onto the world (because it was a SINGLEplayer world) he wished someone might fall out of the sky maybe so that he would have a friend.  

Little did he know, in a different universe, there was another man also suffering of boredom and loneliness.  

"Oh it would be so much fun if I was randomly magically teleported to another universe!" Kakashi said out loud to himself without really thinking about it. "I like it plenty here but I also haven't been exploring just for the sake of it and maybe other universes exist. It would be fun to go to one." Suddenly his wish was about to come true but he didn't know it yet. You see, the Script Writers of the Etho world/universe thing were listening to him (because he was talking out loud) and decided that the two of them should meet up!  

They opened up a mysterious void portal to travel between universes right underneath where Kakashi was standing and even his super fast ninja reflexes weren't speedy enough to dodge it so he fell on his butt in a weird field in Etho's world except he didn't know it was Etho's world. He was very confused. "Did some sort of omnipotent being hear me and send me here? Wait I shouldn't keep talking out loud, they might hear me- oh no I keep doing it anyway!" The Script Writers were mostly ignoring him now so he didn't really need to worry but how was he supposed to know that? 

Footsteps to the side alerted him to another presence. Kakashi turned around and saw ETHO! He didn't know it was Etho until Etho said "Hello. Who are you, and how did you end up in this world? I am Etho Slab."  

Etho looked at the weird person who had appeared in his world. He looked at their username and saw that it said "Kakashi" but he waited for an introduction.  

"Hello, Etho, my name is Kakashi and I randomly telported here. I am supposed to be the copy ninja so why do you look like me? You can't steal my brand!" Said Kakashi as he raised his eyebrow (the one that wasn't covered up by his headband).  

Etho tilted his head to the side curiously. "No, you look like me, not the other way around."  

Etho and Kakashi looked at each other and both of them realized that they found the other attractive. Etho walked up to where Kakashi was still sitting and offered a hand. He pulled him to his feet and then also continued to hold his hand because he liked holding the mysterious good-looking guy's hand. Kakashi didn't pull his hand away either so that was a plus!  

Meanwhile Kakashi was thinking about how back in the leaf village he was always the tallest one around but this Etho person was a little bit taller than him and he thought it was cool and also in his brain it made Etho more attractive. "...back to my Man Cave and sort out this stuff maybe?" Oh crap, Etho was talking to him!  

"Uhhh sure," was all he could say though. Etho led him through the forest towards a cave in the side of a mountain. There was a pretty shade of green grass on the inside of the cave, but Kakashi was mostly focused on the fact that Etho was still holding his hand and it felt nice. 

Etho and Kakashi were now inside the Man Cave and Etho was digging through a storage chest filled with books. He was doubly sad because he had to let go of Kakashi's hand and also didn't find what he was looking for, which was anything about non-whitelisted players entering private worlds unexpectedly. But he still had to try and find a way for Kakashi to get back to wherever he came from- even if part of him wanted him to stay forever and be with him.  

Kakashi was wandering around in the area and observing all the cool machinery and stuff. There were a lot of blue crystals of some sort in the walls too which looked pretty even if it was slightly irritating to him for some strange inexplicable reason. Etho started talking again.  

"So I can't find anything and it's nearing nighttime, you could stay here tonight and we could keep looking around tomorrow?"  

Kakashi shrugged. "Sure, why not. I don't mind."  

Etho was so excited at the prospect of having Kakashi spend the night with him that he forgot that he didn't have a proper bedroom for himself, let alone a guest room! In his defense, he didn't ever expect to need a guest room but he'd definitely have to do something because he wasn't going to make Kakashi sleep on the floor somewhere.  

He excused himself for a moment and placed his bed on the ground in a different room and then realized he didn't have a spare bed on him. And it would be easy to go and craft another but he really didn't want to at the moment, so it looked like he and Kakashi would just have to share the one bed, oh nooooooo! How unlucky and totally one-hundred percent a coincidence and not at all an on-purpose thing! 

When Kakashi was told this he was secretly happy about it. He didn't bother pretending he was unhappy either, he just went along with it without any comments.  

By now it was really dark outside and the sun had set fully so they got in bed, and neither of them took off their masks because they both slept in them because they're weird like that.  

"Goodnight Etho," said Kakashi.  

"Goodnight Kakashi," said Etho.  

Kakashi fell asleep almost instantly but Etho stayed awake a little bit longer. He found himself wondering how Kakashi's unnaturally spiky hair stayed up constantly even when he was asleep. Without thinking much about the consequences of his actions he reached over next to him and brushed away a section of hair that was flopping into Kakashi's face a little, and was surprised that it was actually quite soft.  

He was even more surprised when a had shot out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him. "What are you doing?" Asked Kakashi.  

"Your hair is very soft. I like it," said Etho. Kakashi blushed but Etho didn't see it. He blushed more and also let out a tiny squeak when Etho added, "You're very pretty, you know."  

Etho and Kakashi stared deeply into each other's eyes for a few moments before Kakashi said, "You're not too bad yourself!" Then they both simultaneously leaned in for a kiss (through their masks) and they thought it was a nice kiss. They did it again, but Etho yawned because it WAS still pretty late at night. He laughed, and his new boyfriend also laughed with him, and then they went to sleep for real this time. 

The end 

would you guys still love me if i decided to write a kakashi/etho crackfic with no cohesive plot