#but sometimes it's like... i don't have a choice anyway

[terrania]

A Dance in the Darkened Wood

Just two players. papers, tokens, and two d6.

An ancient ritual dictates that when two champions battle to the death, the victorious’ village will gain a year’s protection. Tonight this is you, but something’s wrong. Every death wakes you that same morning, transformed.

On character sheet, mark stats with three points each.

Mark appearance.

A space for wounds.

FORCE- strength, power. Exert will and brutality.

SURVIVAL- speed, biological self. Take blows and avoid danger.

CONCEPTUALIZATION- intellect, creativity, planning, higher thought.

WILLPOWER- bravery, persistence, patience. Get back up.

HEART- love, trust, understanding, for another and the world.

Play starts the moment you lock eyes. You are in a darkened wood.

When you contest an action they take upon you, contesting roll plus method’s associated stat.

When you contest what they enact upon anything else, roll for that thing with your own stats. The winner narrates, choosing to inflict a wound if desired.

With three wounds from the same stat, you are BROKEN. You fail all rolls and can be killed.

When one dies, both reset.

Mark four stat increases and two decreases for their next form. Mark how their form has altered. Reveal simultaneously.

Five loops or until you choose peace.

Ok this could prolly be more readable if it had... more words.... but swagever! i made it and it's mine and it's cool so yeah. :3 uh i don't know if the title counts as part of the word count... i don't think it does?? also this thing in retrospect is probably very difficult to understand if you're not well versed in ttrpgs... i hope it makes, like, enough sense for whoever's reading this anyway. the stats are force, survival, etc... also when i say "contesting," i mean that you are both making rolls, sometimes in different stats, and whoever rolls higher wins and narrates. i have a lotta ideas for how this could be improved... which would require more words of course. i may have to release that thing later this month if i have time, writing for rpgs is really fun. perhaps i could even do some amateur formatting and sell it on itch for $2 a pop... the skies truly is the limit. uh i believe the Slay The Princess inspiration here is obvious, the general word choice and tone is inspired by the twine games by Porpentine Charity Heartscape, especially Howling Dogs. please lmk if you play it i think it would be really fun tbh

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[fangirl-erdariel]

Sometimes it fucks me up that Túrin was so loved, by so many people. And it didn't save him, and arguably it was Húrin's love for him that doomed him in the first place, given the phrasing of the curse. But he was loved. So many people did their best to ensure that he lived, that he was safe, that he could be happy. I just. aaaaaaaaaaaaa ;_;

I think in some ways it's especially interesting when contrasted with Kullervo, one of the direct inspirations of the character. Because it's maybe in my eyes the single most crucial difference between the characters. Like, both of them are tragic heroes, who are stubborn, and deeply hurt and angry, and make rash choices in the heat of the moment that often end up digging the hole deeper than it had to be. Both also have sisters they don't meet until they're adults, have sex with them, the sister finds out and kills herself by jumping into a river, and the hero asks his sword whether it would like to kill him, the sword is like "yeah sure i've killed innocents too so why wouldn't i kill you", and the hero uses the sword to kill himself near the site where the sister did.

But Kullervo is not loved or cared for, the way Túrin is. Kullervo is left as a baby in the hands of the people who'd attacked his father's lands, and made to work, and when he proves to be more trouble than they bargained for, he is sold as a slave, treated poorly by the lady of the house he's sold to, shit like that. It's... kinda a central point of the story, really. The version Lönnrot put in the Kalevala (which is not the only version of the story that would've existed in oral tradition, but I am really not at all familiar with any other versions of the story that one might still be able to find, and in any case, the version presented in Kalevala was the one Tolkien knew and was inspired by) quite explicitly says that Kullervo couldn't adjust to living a normal life because he was raised by people who didn't care about him, and that children raised without love/by people who are abusive towards them are gonna be messed up and struggle to live and act in society

So, yeah, I don't know, it's really interesting (and also heartbreaking) to me how Morwen and Thingol and Melian and others in Silmarillion seem to almost be specifically making every effort to ensure that Túrin avoids that fate. Obviously Kalevala and the tale of Kullervo doesn't exist in the setting, but you know what I mean. The way they try to make sure that he is not enslaved, that he is not abused, that he is loved and safe. And yet, it fails. Because of the curse (which, as far as it comes from anywhere but Tolkien's mind, comes from inspirations other than Kalevala) he ends up on a path to destruction anyway

and just. yeah. it's interesting, looking at the way Túrin's story is in some ways in conversation with Kullervo's story. and it's also so sad, how much the characters *try* to avoid that path, that fate, with ultimately no success

[killerchickadee]

Every time I see that post about bids for attention, or whatever it is, I think about my mom.

I don't really talk to anyone in my family, and I hate that and don't know how to reconnect.

My mom is also into birds so last summer when I saw the whooping crane I texted her a shitty excited picture and like all caps, "I saw a whooping crane!!!"

Her response was "lol". That's it. No follow up or chit chat, just a shut down of my attempts to connect with her.

The other week I sent her a link to the crane cam and told her to check in on it at sunrise and sunset (which is when the cranes are there, though lately they've been hanging out later in the day) and her response was "Cool!"

That's it! Again, completely shut me down. If I died tomorrow the last thing my mom said to me was "Cool".

[butterflysonnets]

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

[humandisastersquad]

#don't shoot buy also i honestly like tegan better than donna#donna used to be my fave but honestly revisting her i think she comes across as well... vapid sometimes#like when she's introduced she's a catty temp who loves trash tv and harasses her coworker into going out with her#and then she and the doctor become besties and her life revolves around the tardis#to the point that she can't leave without lit having her mind wiped#RTD kinda has Notions about how working class ppl and women act that aren't rlly unpacked#like he makes the doctor a semi mythic figure companions (always female) can't help but be enraptured by#and to contrast with him is the normal everywoman companion#who can only be with him for a short while and must eventually reject him and accept the Beautiful Mundanity of modern capitalist life#or be burned out by tragedy for reaching too close to god like a modern tower of babel#and the tardis team is always the doctor + one woman and the male characters are never as codependant on him as the female ones#classic who isn't like that like tegan gets accidentally kidnapped complains the whole time (as she should)#but eventually decides to kick it with her accidental kidnapper anyway and has relationships other than him on the tardis#because there's more than one person there#and when she does leave it's more abrupt than she deserves but it makes sense#it's not accepting the romanticised mundane or getting killed or wtvr#it's a choice made of self preservation#and i love her#annnyway i'm sorry for rambling about my hottakes in your tags op feel free to shoot me on sight#so whatever anyway byeee i'm done now (tags by @hollow-keys)

if u can’t handle tegan jovanka then u don’t deserve donna noble tbh

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Not me genuinely in a dilemma of whether or not I should block someone just for one absolutely ASS take even though it literally won't make a difference from their POV

[spiderwarden]

*draws gun on the dash* and for the love of God, don't ever softblock me. I loathe that. I have structured my blog to people I like, if you want to unfollow me just unfollow. we don't have to be mutuals for me to enjoy your content.

[talentforlying]

priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly? constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you? priest: you did what...? constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?

constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know! and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!! ...

constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way. — hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"

babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)

anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.

80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.

and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?

hm. i just don't know about all that.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a big google doc thing where I keep track of media and stuff (putting everything in loosely ranked categories), which is mostly just for my own reference so I know what tv shows I've already seen before, etc. and I never really look back through it, typically just a quick "okay, watched two movie in the past 8 months, need to quickly slap them somewhere in the lists. okay. done. save document. exit". But today I was actually reading through some of the old notes and there are like... MULTIPLE places where my comment is basically "It would have been good if it were about elves" or "I wish there was a fantasy show made in this same style" or "It's well made, but I just keep thinking about how I would like it more if everyone was an elf or was in old 1700s costumes" or etc like...... lol.... Most biased media ranking system on earth blatantly made by someone with an extremely hyperspecific range of narrow interests. It'd be like if a food reviewer only had 5 foods they actually liked, so they'd just go to a pizza place and be like "eh, the pizza was okay, but I just think it would be better if it was cereal instead. :/ ...2 out of 10"

[elftwink]

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

[lord-squiggletits]

Something else that makes me sympathetic to Pharma's situation is like. Idk if there's an actual term for this or if someone smarter and more academic wrote it about some real life context that actually matters.

But, so we've already established among Pharma stans that the circumstances at Delphi were blackmail/torture with no real way out that wouldn't involve Pharma being responsible for people getting killed (either killing patients for the deal or having everyone die bc he failed his end of the deal).

And I feel like while "he's still in the wrong because he killed people" is part of it, another sort of implicit part is the idea that Pharma should've been willing to take more personal risk, maybe even risk dying? I mean, Ratchet does ask "why didn't you just detonate it near the DJD" (to which Pharma responds that he did try to get Sonic and Boom to do it, but they refused) so like

Idk I feel like we do have this social notion of martyrs as a very romantic ideal, people you can praise for being so brave and strong and righteous that they ended their own lives for their cause, while you can also coo about how sad and tragic it is that dying is what it took for them to do the right thing. But at the same time I feel like in reality, having an expectation that people become martyrs is kind of a toxic social norm bc like. It's very easy to demand that others sacrifice their lives for some Ultimate Moral Good when you yourself aren't experiencing the same hardships as they are. And ultimately it is kind of fucked up to tell someone "the moral thing you should've done was risk your life/kill yourself" because asking someone to pay their life to do the right thing is no small request. And sure, the typical response would be to call them a "coward" for caring more about saving their own skin instead of doing the right thing... but again, death is a really scary thing and self-preservation is a really strong instinct, so it kind of feels like having this binary view of "you're either a Brave Hero who sacrifices your life for everyone else or a Dirty Coward who's too scared of dying to do what's right" is kind of fucked up?

I guess the best way to describe it is that if someone willingly gives up their life as a sacrifice to others, it can be a noble thing because it's a choice they made willingly, but if it becomes a Moral Standard that in order to be a Good Person you have to be unafraid of throwing your life away and if you aren't willing to die you're a Cowardly Bad Person, that's when it becomes toxic.

Idk, I guess how this ties back to Pharma is that he was never in a position where he expected to make these kinds of moral decisions/ultimatums. He's a doctor who doesn't even get into combat, his job is to heal and not to kill, he's behind the front lines in a hospital that's supposed to be a safe, neutral place for him to heal people. So in the face of suddenly having a "murder people on behalf of me, or I murder everyone you swore to protect" ultimatum thrust upon him, I understand why Pharma wasn't """"""""""brave enough"""""""""" to "do the right thing" (whatever that would've been in the case of Delphi). You could argue that maybe a frontliner soldier accepted the burden of possibly dying for their cause and they've become used to it as someone who lives that reality every single day, but I feel like for Pharma, who's a doctor and a protected non-combatant (from what we can tell), that sort of risking of his life/living with the fact his life could be snuffed out any day isn't something he would've been prepared for at all.

And for me personally, from an outsider's perspective, it strikes me as kind of unethical to go "oh well he should've just detonated the bomb himself even if it killed him" bc again, there's a difference between witnessing a moral conundrum as a bystander versus being the person living with it and being under time pressure where it's do-or-die. Just as part of my personal standards, I feel like death is such a huge consequence/burden of someone's actions (literally you are no longer alive, any potential you had left is cut short, you cease to exist on this plane) that it feels rather callous to go "Well you should've just been willing to die for your beliefs if you really cared that much!!!"

[cherrymoonvol6]

.

[brinnanza]

you guys know stuff can just be neutral right. like it doesn't have to be good or bad it can just Be ykwim like sometimes an experience is Weird but that doesn't necessarily imply that it was good or bad sometimes things are just so unfamiliar that the sheer novelty overrides having an opinion about it. sometimes you hear someone's died, but it's no one you knew or would ever know and it's so many degrees of separation from the source that they have no emotional investment in it either and that's not automatically a tragedy OR a relief it's just a statement of fact.

sometimes stuff just Is. and it's okay that it is.

[daz4i]

wait i have another rant unrelated to anything. the common... perception? trend? idek what to call it, in fandoms and media commentary communities that every antagonist in every story has to have some deep reason for why they do things, or a sad backstory or w/e, imo kills creativity, makes stories lose their focus, and can be very upsetting when done wrong

like it's okay to have purely evil villains. it's okay to make hate sinks. that doesn't make you a bad writer. characters are meant to be tools, vehicles to tell a story, and sometimes you need that tool to just be an obstacle with no real depth. sometimes the story is more about how the protagonist overcomes hardships, and in certain premises those hardships work better when depicted as other humans. and honestly, even if they can be replaced by a generic monster or some object or w/e, it's still okay to make them a person if you wanna bc it serves the same purpose at the end of the day and you don't need to excuse that choice, imo.

like ppl who tear into every story and try to find every logical fault in it - even when it's only a fault when you entirely strip the context of fiction off it, thus often making these points irrelevant to the discussion about. yknow. a fictional work - can be so boring. I'm all for dissecting stories and trying to understand the logic behind some stuff, and while i personally prefer stories where the villain does indeed have a relatable or at least understandable motive, i do think that for certain stories it just does a disservice and frankly misses the point of why the story is even being told. like sometimes the villain is some money hungry asshole bc we needed a money hungry asshole to stand in opposition to our protagonists. it's not that deep, and it doesn't need to be. you just want to read a different story, so go do that.

[on-a-sunbeam]

So please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Alias ever really talked about how awful the whole doubling process would be? Like, the actual process itself would probably be pretty painful, sure, but remember going through puberty and having your body adjust to all that? Except this time your entire DNA is being changed. But not your brain, apparently. (WHICH, while I'm rambling, according to this report, you 100% can identify different brains from each other. In Alias, however, they say you can only tell if someone's a double through their eyes, which means that the person's actual brain is also changed, so I guess Alias just casually tried to tell us that souls or something of that ilk do, in fact, exist, and then never mentioned that again)

Which puts us in a very unique position! Because your brain's shape is now different, it's literal dna is different, and that does affect you as a person, except no?? It doesn't effect the doubles? As far as we see they're the same person. Ignoring the way more fun option of this does effect the doubles and maybe they start to show traits that the original had which would've been SO much fun but whatever, let's just say that your brain shape/makeup doesn't matter. Everything you do, everything that makes you you comes from something else. Your soul, your spirit, Rambaldi controlling you like a video game character, whatever.

This would make being a double really, really suck. Because your consciousness just got poured into this new body, essentially, which means that you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW TO USE IT. The proportions are just wrong, first of all. Maybe the original's legs are a little longer. Now you have to walk up a flight of stairs, and not only are their legs longer, maybe they're a little thicker. Maybe they have a bad knee that you never knew about. Maybe they work out a lot and their legs are way stronger than yours were. Even if you guys were exactly the same height and lived exactly the same way, you would still have fundamentally different legs.

But for the sake of argument let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say okay, so maybe you still have your soul/consciousness/whatever, but that just contains your memory and personality and what not. All of the physical aspects are controlled by your brain, which should be suited to your body either way because that's how the process works. (Disclaimer: I am not a scientist and have no idea what I'm talking about) Okay, fine. That's fair. Except...even if your brain can move your legs perfectly, wouldn't it still be terrifying to remember that this isn't how they normally move? Your body might be perfectly functional, but your mind still wouldn't be used to functioning it.

(And this is all very sudden, too! I mentioned puberty earlier, but that is something that a) still takes place in your own body, with your own brain. It's hormones changing, not DNA. And b) might come faster for some people, but you know, generally takes a little longer than a couple-hour long surgery)

Also if we were to go that route, what would happen if the original person say, had some mental condition? That's a brain thing, not a soul thing. Your physical brain is now the same as theirs, so would you inherit that too?

In conclusion: local idiot rambles about how Allison should've misjudged a step and fallen down a flight of stairs and gotten adhd from Francie.

[miscreantahead]

I really like Malevolent because even though I think it's weird that fans get to make choices about what happens I usually don't notice it. Even when I think Arthur makes a choice that feels totally bogus the writing surrounding it finds a way to make it make total sense with the character and while I don't know my opinion on this fan's choice medium as a whole, I have a ton of respect for that.