#but the stat bonuses of one

[giganotus]

I made a DnD stat block for The Fragmented One and I can already tell I'm going to regret it if/when my DM decides to throw it at me.

[parseolegacy]

Huevember day 13 + 14 - Datacron Taking it a little easy today with a quick one -w-

[atelier-of-chel-the-red]

new item suffix: Volition

items of Volition bestow their bonus to STR, WIS, and will saves. typically these will be headband, waist, or neck slot items.

new item suffix: Vehemence

items of Vehemence bestow their bonus to DEX, INT, and reflex saves. typically these will be bracer, wrist, or ring slot items.

new item suffix: Vitality

items of Vitality bestow their bonus to CON, CHA, and fortitude saves. typically these will be chest, shoulder, or leg slot items.

[elliewiltarwyn]

Shot:

Chaser:

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

I just got Shinon for the first time in this file. 🤣

[beastenraged]

Have a DND character that I've made that's half shifter and half gnoll, and tbh, mechanically wise that can work in 5th edition. Without having to homebrew anything too.

How? Well, I have the gnolls simply claim to be Longtooth shifters, which just have the race feature of allowing you to bite people as an unarmed attack. Hyena fangs are perfect for that.

What, we're furrier than most shifters? There's tons of variations in were-curses, why wouldn't shifters be the same? Gnolls, what do you mean, we're just 'hyena-shifters,' that's all.

Of course, I've created most of this in my own DnD world/country version where a small gnoll population lives after escaping from their bitch-ass creator's control by pledging to one of local pantheon.

It's a creation that I don't think I'd ever be able to run for a DnD campaign, because I do huge amounts of culture building in it that very few DnD people care about in their games.

[aries-wants-anarchy]

Since I’ve just posted about fallout I want to also say I’ve noticed how in Skyrim my last character runs around like a tank with a strong ass hammer and perks maxed out in the two handed and armor trees and now in fallout 4 the Bank of America also is using a hammer that they’re doing base damage of 303 and I can’t remember the exact radiation damage but well over 200. In conclusion based on my recent gameplays of Bethesda and Todd Howard approved content… HAMMER

[gay-victorian-astronomer]

Who/what is compression factor?? I saw the tags and would love to hear rambles if you'd like :D

Compression Fracture is my Disco Elysium fanfiction that I am currently working on! I'm not 100% sure that it will qualify as longfic, but it's going to be long enough that I want to write it all before starting to publish it on AO3 so I can revise it once the whole work is finished (the amount of plot holes I've already found and had to patch over. my god). My current guesstimate of the finished length is ~60k words in ~10 chapters, of which 11k words are written.

I believe Svet said you were thinking about playing Disco Elysium at some point so I don't want to go into too much detail about what the fic is about— it gets into major spoiler territory real fast. You should totally play it though; it's a phenomenal game and now that I'm thinking about it I think you would really vibe with it. The worldbuilding!! The Themes!!! (It's also currently on sale on Steam for like $10, but I'm also under the impression that it's not too hard to put on a pirate hat and go find it elsewhere if that's your vibe) (I could give you a full sales pitch if you want it I have fallen down the special interest rabbit hole so badly)

but yeah I'm coming back to the fic after about a month and a half of not really working on it for several reasons. My laptop broke at the start of the semester so most of those 11k words were written on my phone, which worked fine until I started having nerve issues in my hands from doing that, so then I was waiting for my laptop to be fixed, but by the time I got it back we had reached December! Land of final assignments and exams and PhD Application Hell Season! I had much less time to write fic, and what time I did have was going to my gift exchange piece, so she got a bit sidelined. But we're back in business now! Albeit slowly, because my hands are better than they were but still having Problems (I'll make a doctor's appointment about it once I have the executive function to make the necessary phone call). Still, actually having a creative project I was working on consistently helped my mental health tremendously this semester so I'm pretty determined to keep working on it.

but yeah that's what that is! I've also been posting snippets of it as I write (doing kedreeva's WIP Wednesday game helps keep me motivated to write) which are also tagged with the title— they should be relatively spoiler-free both for the game and the fic itself, so feel free to look at em if you want, but they also probably won't make much sense out of context.

[nickmarini]

Ayden’s Build 

TL;DR: Barbarian 1, Druid  2 (Circle of the Stars), Paladin 8 (Oath of the Ancients), and Cleric 9 (Peace Domain). Feats: Squire of Solamnia, Remarkable Recovery, Warcaster, Knight of Crowns, Spelldriver, Tough.

Building Ayden was a joy and a journey. To begin we were told we had 20 levels to work with and stats of 20 across the board. The only thing I knew about Ayden from the session 0 was that he was going to be a Cleric of the Everlight and that I wanted to make him the best support character I could. I also knew that the Dawnfather was aware of the mission briefing and so would have directed his growth to the task at hand. 

Stats of 20 meant multiclassing into any class was possible and that any ability score based bonuses or proficiency based abilities were going to be very good. I figured that with a warlock and a sorcerer we’d have some pretty good counterspelling and 9th level spell access, so I didn’t worry myself about either of those, instead focusing on making sure we all survived. 

The Dawnfather and The Everlight share 2 of 3 Domains. Life and Light. The Everlight’s 3rd domain is Peace. The Peace Domain cleric is an excellent subclass and its 6th level ability, Protective Bond, was something I knew I wanted to build around. The ability to take hits for, and aid, my siblings while teleporting around the battlefield is an excellent support ability and it also lets allies in the bond do the same, fostering sibling unity and cohesion.

With the Dawnfather having Nature as his unique domain separate from the Everlight, and literally sending himself to Exandria to infiltrate a city full of the greatest mages of the age, the Oath of Ancients Paladin seemed like an obvious path. It is the nature Paladin, (his domain) and 7 levels gives you both Aura of Protection and Aura of Warding. This means as Ayden moves through the battlefield with Protective Bond he will be granting allies +5 to saves from his cha as well as resistance to damage from spells. Incredibly good going up against the wizards of Aeor he knew he would encounter. I didn’t want to go to 10 with Paladin because I didn’t want to be immune to frightened. I just felt that fear played too large a role in the reasons the gods were here and although aura of courage is probably my favorite ability going back to 3rd edition, I felt like it wasn’t right for Ayden. He had to fear in order to reinforce his need to hope. 

These two classes were set relatively quickly and then I began looking at how else I was going to build him out. 

I really liked the idea of being able to grant my allies some extra attacks and so I was looking at battle master to get commanders strike and goading attack as well as maneuvering attack to help take hits for and position my allies. Action Surge is also a great ability that could really come in handy if I needed to save someone and needed one extra action to do so. 

I was also looking at the 2nd level Divination Wizard ability Portent. The ability to fully dictate 2 rolls is very powerful in certain circumstances, especially if the numbers are very high or very low.

Both these seemed good but weren’t feeling totally right from a character perspective. They felt too forced.

As I was playing around with these two classes I was also building Aydens backstory. I really liked the idea of him being agriculturally focused, as this aspect of the Dawnfather is actually his youngest. Sun begets days, and thus time and seasons, and as civilization evolves agriculture follows. The fighter levels lent the idea that he has spent some time training under a knight or some such warrior, and I knew that he would eventually find his way to Trist to begin his tutelage and become her cleric. I liked there being these different eras of his life. 

It was around this time that I got an awesome email asking me to describe Ayden visually so that the incredibly talented Hannah Friederichs and Cael Lyons could begin to bring Ayden and the Dawnfather to life. I wanted Ayden to be a simply dressed with a shield he took from his mentor, but no sword for striking. They sent 4 sketches and told me I could mix and match as I desired. Image #1 however was exactly as I had envisioned him. It was the simplest and had this depth to his eyes that told the story of a much older soul in this 15 year old body. It was so perfect that it made me realize I had been going in the totally wrong direction with fighter and wizard. The concepts of nature and agriculture were suddenly staring me in the face. It was not wizard, but druid, and his mentor could have taught him to be a paladin as easily as fighter, but if he is the bringer of agriculture who has he brought it to? A remote tribe still hunting and gathering was the answer. Barbarian therefore replaced fighter. I can’t tell you how influential the sketch I received was. It felt like a bolt of lightning suddenly clarified everything. 

I was for sure cleric 6, Paladin 7 and now looking at druid and barbarian. 

I didn’t know Druid subclasses very well but Circle of the Stars jumped out from the pack just with its name. The Sun after all is a star. When I read its 2nd level abilities Starmap and Starry form it was so obvious. I can cast Guiding Bolt to set up those attacks I wanted to grant, and I can glow instead of wild shape and either heal more or have a massive bonus to maintain the concentration spells I knew I wanted to cast. For the keeper of time to know how to read the stars just felt right. It also feel right that the druids of a tribe that had been hunting and gathering during the tumultuous Calamity would have learned to navigate by the stars, a singular constant in an every changing age. 

Barbarian has a number of interesting subclasses but none felt like they clicked. 1 level of Barbarian though, for a character with 20 dexterity and 20 constitution, catapults your AC to 20 and it also gives you a proficiency in Constitution saving throws if you take it as your first class, again reinforcing those concentration rolls. He was found as a child by this barbarian tribe and his first class is also his first community. Barbarian was the strong foundation I would build upon. 

I was now Cleric 6, Paladin 7, Druid 2, Barbarian 1. Reorganized to be the order Ayden would have taken them in it becomes the following:

Barbarian 1, Druid  2 (Circle of the Stars), Paladin 7 (Oath of the Ancients), and Cleric 6 (Peace Domain)

4 more levels to distribute. As a player who has mostly played 3.5 (I think downfall just about doubled the amount of 5E I have played) feats are my absolute favorite things, so getting to multiples of 4 in class levels to grab some was something I wanted to do (also I didn’t have to worry about ability score increases)! I had already given one feat up by taking barb and druid but I made up for it with the human variant. I also took the Knight of Solamnia background to give me Squire of Solamnia, the prerequisite for Knight of the Crowns which would give me the ability to grant attacks to my allies without needing battle maneuvers. 

So I upped paladin from 7-8 for a feat and then decided to take Cleric from 6-9 because it gave me a feat and access to the spell Dawn. I mean the Dawnfather should be able to cast Dawn after all! 

Now to feats

1) Background: Squire of Solamnia to give me the prerequisite for Knight of the Crowns

2) Human Variant: Remarkable Recovery. I knew I’d be taking extra damage so having 5 extra hp from any healing I get might just be the difference. It also plays into his background. He had to leave the Barbarian tribe he brought agriculture to because his skin could not retain the ceremonial tattoo ink that would have symbolized his initiation into the community. 

3) Cleric 4 Warcaster to get advantage on those concentration checks, that along with proficiency and starry form of the dragon means I need to take 28 damage (56 if it’s a spell) to even have to roll, and when I do I get advantage and proficiency on the check. Getting me to lose concentration is gonna be a task. 

4) Paladin 4 Knight of the Crown getting to grant an attack proficiency times per day combos wonderfully with Starmaps free guiding bolt, conveniently also proficiency times per day. 

5) Cleric 8 Spelldriver I’m gonna be casting a bunch of spells so the ability to cast multiple each turn is going to make my support spells come out much faster. I have a big fam to take care of!

6) Paladin 8 Tough I really went back and forth between this and Inspiring Leader. Granting all my siblings 25 temp hp is amazing but ultimately I decided that as I’d be tanking a bunch of damage I’d need toughness. Toughness gave me 15 more hp than Inspiring leader would have, and I ended up going down to 14 at one point so it was a decision that very much paid off by a single HP! Don’t wanna pop a deathward if you can help it!

Last but not least we were granted 2 magic items. One very rare and one uncommon. For my uncommon I chose a cloak of resistance, a parting gift from the tribe that Ayden could not join. This upped my saves to 11s or 17s and took my AC to 23. For his very rare magic item I took a spellguard shield, inherited from the knight who brought him from the remote tribe to Trist‘s school, giving me advantage on saving throws vs spells and magical effects and inflicting disadvantages on spell effects targeting me. Combine that with resistance to spells from Aura of Warding and that’s a nasty nasty combo v wizards. 

All in all Ayden’s build is an incredibly hard to target tanky support character who can move through the battlefield protecting his allies and being an absolute nightmare for enemy spellcasters. The only thing I really didn’t fully consider was just how much damage he would take from Warding Bond which totally bypasses all those wonderfully crafted defenses. As crazy as it is, I think we barely got to scratch the surface of Aydens full potential and it’s probably good those mages decided to cast spells at everyone else because Ayden was going to be a tough character for a spell caster to crack. The Commanding Rally did get to shine allowing characters who specialized in weapon attacks to get a little extra out of those 20 level commitments. Ayden’s build was crafted to keep his siblings alive and let them shine as bright as possible together. I’m very proud of him!

If you read all this then you’re as nerdy as me and deserve a reward!

[4giorno]

this was supposed to be my perfect kaveh piece but now its def my nilou off piece lmao

[funnyboxman]

hey nerds

i'm making a lobotomy corp DND system

if you have any questions, just ask :3 (i made this in a delusional state at like 3am so there might be some weird spelling) I'll do a DM's guide later on how to create abnos, general roleplay stuff and how combat should work, I'm WAY too tired to do any more work right now

[vexwerewolf]

God I wish IPS-N had an Artillery Mech.

I have mixed opinions on this. I think it's thematic and interesting that - in the core book, at least - each of the three commercial manufacturers had a missing role. IPS-N had no Artillery, SSC had no Defender and Harrison Armory had no Support. These absences felt like they kind of spoke to the values of each corporation.

Then in The Long Rim, we got the Sunzi, a Harrison Armory Support, and it was interesting to see what sort of thing the Armory considered to be Support - it's a fundamentally more selfish kind of Support, in that instead of repairing or removing conditions from an ally (like the Lancaster) or providing targetting assistance (like the Swallowtail), you're simply deciding where on the battlefield they are.

In Field Guide to the KTB, we got the White Witch, and again, we see what SSC feels like a Defender should be: one that reveres and pushes the boundaries of the human form by simply adapting to damage, becoming inured to it over time.

The problem with an IPS-N Artillery frame is twofold:

Core Bonus Lineup

Firstly, while they initially lacked a class of mech, there was nothing about SSC or HA that innately hampered the idea of one. There was nothing innate about the way SSC frames operate that prevented them from having Defenders, nor HA from having Supports.

IPS-N has one very serious issue when it comes to Artillery frames: its Core Bonus lineup. Two of its Core Bonuses (Gyges Frame, Titanomachy Mesh) are focused exclusively on melee combat, three (Briareos Frame, Reinforced Frame, Sloped Plating) are based around survivability, and the last (Fomorian Frame) is a niche option designed for certain builds. There's nothing in its CB lineup that an Artillery frame wants as a first priority.

Contrast this with SSC, which gets Neurolink Targeting (+3 range to all ranged weapons), and HA, which gets Heatfall Coolant System (Overcharge capped at 1d6), which are both great for Artillery frames.

Now, it's true that HORUS doesn't get any Core Bonuses directly useful for an Artillery frame either, but the one core Artillery frame that HORUS has is the Pegasus, which is extremely abnormal both by Artillery standards and by frame standards in general. (Also, it could be argued that Lesson of the Held Image is good as a way of applying free Lock Ons for yourself).

Not having any useful Core Bonuses is a problem for IPS-N that is compounded by the other major issue:

Combat Ethos

Each of the four core manufacturers is tied to a mech skill - Agility for SSC, Systems for HORUS, Engineering for HA and Hull for IPS-N. IPS-N hulls tend to be biased significantly towards high HP, Armor and Repair Cap, often at the expense of Sensor Range, Heat Cap and SP - the former grouping being stats that Artillery cares less about (since they tend not to want to be in the front lines), and the latter being stats they care more about (since Artillery frames tend to focus around one powerful gun backed up by a large number of support systems).

IPS-N frames are built to get up close and personal with the enemy, usually engaging at a maximum distance of 5 spaces. No ranged weapon that IPS-N makes shoots beyond Range 8.

I'm not saying that IPS-N couldn't have an Artillery, by any means, but there are more mechanical issues with it than any other class-manufacturer combination.

[songship]

I'm cooking

what if... I made double cross builds for the limbus sinners...

[anim-ttrpgs]

Disabilities and Monsters in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Through a discussion with @vixensdungeon (great blog to follow for TTRPG stuff by the way) it came to our attention that some of our more jokey and memey posts and reblogs may have given some people a slightly skewed idea of what Eureka, and particularly the “urban fantasy” parts of Eureka are really about, and its tone. We like to joke around about it, and the “cute monster girl” angle really sells on tumblr.com, but actually playing these types of characters in Eureka is not exactly a power fantasy. They eat people, and often eat them alive. If you find that cute, funny, and/or sexy, well, Eureka is still probably just the game you’re looking for, but that isn’t the main thing. Eureka uses the fact that many of these characters necessarily subsist off the flesh and/or blood of other people as a loose metaphor for mental and physical disability.

Imagine you need something that everyone else has but you don’t. If you don’t have it regularly, you will literally start to waste away. The only way to obtain this thing is to take it from another human being, who also needs it, and others will deny that you need it, and abhor that you need it. It’s not uncommon for people, even “progressive” people, to say something along the lines of “they need to all be killed for the good of society,” even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re saying. You didn’t choose to be this way. This is the reality of monsters in Eureka, and many people in real life.

And then even when you have that thing you need, for now, there are many facets of society that you just can’t participate in because your condition makes them impossible for you, like if a vampire wanted to take a run on a sunny beach. Monsters in Eureka will be challenged by their supernatural weaknesses at every turn, while hiding their abhorrent needs from society and even the rest of the party, and asking why they have to be this way. Finding clever ways to get around and circumvent their weaknesses is a core part of the gameplay of monster PCs in Eureka. Imagine you and your friends want or need to go somewhere, but that somewhere is on the other side of a river. The river has a well maintained bridge. For everyone else but you, a vampire who can’t cross running water, getting across the river is the simplest task in the world, so much so that no one would even consider it a task, but for you, it’s a challenge, and for gameplay, it’s a puzzle.

It isn’t totally hopeless, as many of the jokes and fan comics show (those aren’t just memes, they’re only showing one side of the coin and not the other). Monsters who accept, or even embrace and celebrate their monsterhood, can and do exist canonically, alongside monsters who can’t bear to do what they do. In some cases, these may be the same monster on different days.

I’m going to conclude this post by posting two excerpts from the rules text itself.

Disabilities are Disabling

So why don’t disabilities grant any advantage? It isn’t too uncommon for RPGs to have some sort of “flaw” system, where during character creation you can give your character “flaws” or some kind of penalty, and usually get that balanced out by being able to add extra bonuses elsewhere. Sometimes, these “flaws” may take the form of disabilities.

One particular high-profile indie TTRPG takes this beyond just character creation, and makes it so that if a PC receives a “scar” in combat that reduces their physical stats, their mental stats automatically go up by an equivalent amount, and proudly imply that to make any mechanic which results in permanent consequences or makes disabilities disabling is ableist. We think you can probably tell what we think of that from this sentence alone, and we don’t need to elaborate too much. 

We do think, in the abstract, “flaw” systems in character creation are not a bad idea. They allow for more varied options during character creation, while preserving game balance between the PCs.

But in real life, people aren’t balanced. The events that left me injured and disabled didn’t make me smarter or better in any way - if anything, they probably made me dumber, considering the severity of the concussion! Some things happened to me, and now I’m worse. There’s no upside, I just have to keep going, trying harder with a less efficient body, and relying more on others in situations where I am no longer capable of perfect self-sufficiency.

A disabled person is, by definition, less able to perform important daily tasks than the average person. To deny this is to deny that they need help, and to deny that they need help is to enable a refusal to help. This is the perspective from which Eureka’s Grievous Wounds mechanic was written.

When a character is reduced to 1 HP (which by design can result from a single hit from many weapons) they may become incapacitated or they may take a Grievous Wound, which is a permanent injury with no stat benefits. Grievous Wounds don’t have to result from combat, they can also be given to a character during character creation, but not as a trade-off for an extra bonus.

“But then doesn’t my character just have worse stats than the rest of the party?” Yes, haven’t you been reading this? There is no benefit, except for the opportunity to play a disabled character in an TTRPG. This character will probably have to be more reliant on the rest of the party to get by in various situations. Is that a bad thing?

Monsters Essay

All investigators in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are regular people. They can also be a monster, like a blood-sucking vampire or a broom-riding witch. Importantly, this works because despite their unique nature, monsters are still regular people. You can read more about this in Chapter 8, but the setting of Eureka does not have a conspiracy or “masquerade” hiding supernatural people from normal society. Though they are still largely unknown to modern science, they exist within normal society - and a lot of them eat people.

The default assumption in RPGs has been that monsters are just evil by nature, doing evil for evil’s sake. RPGs that seek to subvert this expectation often instead make monsters misunderstood and wrongfully persecuted, but harmless. Eureka takes a wholly different approach.

There are five playable types of monsters in the rulebook right now, and it’ll be seven if we hit all the stretch goals, but for simplicity’s sake this discussion of themes will just focus on the vampire. Despite them applying in different ways, the same overall themes apply to nearly every monster, so if you get the themes for the vampire, you’ll get the gist of what Eureka is doing with its playable monsters in general.

Mundane investigators have to keep themselves going by eating food and sleeping (see p.XX “Composure” for more information). Well, vampires can’t operate the same way. They don’t sleep, and normal food might be tasty for them as long as it isn’t too heavily seasoned, but it doesn’t do anything for them nutritionally. Their main way to keep themselves functioning is fresh living human blood, straight from the source. To do what mundane PCs do normally by just eating and sleeping, vampires have to take from another, whether either of them are happy with this arrangement or not. They do not, of course, literally have to, and a player is not forced to make their vampire PC drink blood, just like you reading this in real life don’t literally have to eat food. You do eat food if you want to live in any degree of comfort or happiness, and vampires do drink blood or they eventually become unable to effectively do anything.

This is numerically, mechanically incentivized and not simply a rule that says something like “this character is a vampire and therefore they must drink blood once every session,” to demonstrate that the circumstances a person faces drive their behavior. In America, there is a tendency to think of criminality and harm done to others as resulting from intrinsic evil, but people do not just wake up one day and decide ��I think I’ll go down the criminal life path.” Their circumstances have barred them from the opportunities that would have given them other options. 

People need food; food costs money; money requires work; work requires getting hired; but getting hired requires a nearby job opening, an education, an impressive resume, nice clothes, charisma, consistent transportation, and so on. For people without other options, crime becomes the only method left to meet their basic needs. Would you rather take what you need from other people, or go without what you need? There are people who don’t have the luxury of a third option. Failure to meet the needs of even a small number of people in a society has high potential to harm the entire society, not just those individuals whose needs are unmet.

As their basic need for blood becomes more and more difficult to ignore, a vampire is going to encounter much the same dilemma. There is really no “legal” or “harmless” way for them to get their needs met, even if they do have resources. Society just isn’t set up for that. And no, your kink is not the solution to this, trying to suggest every vampire just find willing participants who are turned on by vampires or being bitten is suggesting sex work. It’s one step removed from telling a girl she should just get an OnlyFans the minute she turns 18, or that women should just marry a rich man and be a housewife that gets their needs taken care of in exchange for sex and housekeeping. Being forced into such a dynamic isn’t ethical or harmless for the vampire or for their “clients.”

“Oh well, then the vampire should just eat bad people!” You mean those same bad people we just described above? Who gets to decide which people are “bad people?” Who gets to decide that the punishment is assault or death?

Playable monsters in Eureka are dangerous, harmful people. They were set up to be.

Society not being set up in a way that allows monsters to make ethical choices brings us to the next theme: monstrousness as disability, and monsters as “takers.”

Vampires have to take from others a valuable resource that everyone needs to live, and the extraction of which is excruciatingly painful and debilitating. No one knows what happens to blood after a vampire drinks it, it’s just gone. Vampires are open wounds through which blood pours out of the universe.

This is a special need, something they have to take but cannot give back. Their special needs make them literally a drain on society and the people around them. In the modern world, there is a tendency to feel that people must justify their right to life, that they must pay for the privilege of existing in society. This leads people to consider “takers” (people who take much more than they give back, such as disabled people) as something that needs to be pruned away for the betterment of everyone else. Even many so-called “progressives,” while they claim not to agree with pruning “useless eaters,” still hold the unexamined belief that people must justify their existence. To reconcile these two incompatible ideas, they instead simply deny that disabled people take more resources than most people, and are capable of giving back less. This sentiment is perfectly illustrated by the aforementioned game’s insistence that disabilities are never a net reduction of a character’s stats.

Vampires and other playable monsters are inarguably “takers,” but in positioning them as protagonists right alongside mundane protagonists, Eureka puts you in their shoes, and forces you to acknowledge their inner lives and reckon with their circumstances. You have to acknowledge two things: first, that they are dangerous, that they are harmful, that they take more than they give - and second, that they are people. Because they are people, Eureka asserts that they have inherent value, a right to exist, and a right to do what they need to do to exist. (We also acknowledge that their potential victims have a right to do what they need to do to exist and defend themselves, but that is a separate discussion.)

One final point to touch on is mental illness. Mental illness is a disability, one pretty comparable to physical disability in a lot of ways, so all of the above points can apply to this metaphor as well, but there are a few unique comparisons to make here.

It’s not the most efficient, but there are a couple of loopholes deliberately left in the rules that allow vampires to sometimes sporadically restore Composure (and thus their ability to function) without drinking blood. Eureka! moments and Comfort checks from fellow investigators can restore Composure.

When writing the rules, we came to a dilemma where we weren’t sure if it was thematically appropriate for monsters to be able to regain Composure in these ways (since it could lessen their reliance on causing harm), but ultimately we decided that yes, they can.

People with mental illnesses may have the potential to be harmful and dangerous, but all the information we have access to has shown that mentally ill people with robust support structures and control over their own lives are much less likely to enact harm, whether through physical violence, relational violence, or violence against the self. This is why we kept that rule in for playable monsters. Being able to accomplish their goals, and having friends who are there for them, makes that person less likely to cause unnecessary harm.

Vampires are especially great for demonstrating this because they’re immortal and they always come back when “killed.” They can’t be exterminated, they aren’t going away, there will always be problem people in society, no matter how utopian or “progressive.” Vampires are a never-ending curse, who will always be a problem whether they like it or not. The question is how you will grapple with their inevitable presence in society and how you will treat them, not how you will get rid of them.

Eureka is as much a study of the characters themselves as it is the mystery being solved by the characters. It is a game about harsh realities, but it is ultimately compassionate. It argues through its own gameplay that yes, people do have circumstances which drive their behavior, people do have special needs that are beyond their ability to reciprocate, many of those people do cause harm or inconvenience to others, and all of them are still valuable. 

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[thydungeongal]

Broadly speaking I fuck with the OSR playstyle even though I find that in places there is a tendency towards historical revisionism. For an example, claims that the OSR is rediscovering lost modes of play I think are somewhat overblown: I think it's better not to retroactively apply these playstyles discovered through interrogating these texts through a more modern system-matters-pilled lens onto these games, but simply view them as new interpretations of old texts. (Like, I do think there is some truth to "OSR as playstyle" being more grounded in how these games were played in the old days, but I think it is an universal truth that D&D players have always ignored large swathes of the rules: so "discovering" a new playstyle through strict adherence to the rules might actually result in a playstyle not necessarily recognizable to those old geezers.)

But there is one specific claim often made about the OSR as a playstyle that doesn't quite sit right with me: the idea that OSR games test "player skill, not character strength."

There's a few things wrong with this. I understand where it's coming from though: it's contrasting old-school style "you just roll up a random asshole and then try to keep them alive" play with more modern "you lovingly craft a guy who you then throw against adversity" types of play. But where it goes wrong is in the implication that the latter also does not involve a test of player skill. System mastery itself is a player skill and one that can be tested when the rules are treated as a system.

And OSR play isn't even immune from testing player system mastery. So you rolled your 3d6 down the line badly. What do you do? Well, you pick a class that is less reliant on ability scores (this could arguably be all of them, but since the things that ability scores mostly inform are usually relayed to combat you'll want to pick a class that isn't expected to engage in direct combat) or you pick a class with enough non-ability score related bonuses to offset your character's low ability scores.

Combat still rewards system mastery and actually knowing how to best utilize the rules. If you're playing AD&D bows have a separate Rate of Fire stat which means multiple attacks in a combat round even at low levels. Sleep does not give a saving throw in many older editions. Protection from Evil straight up prevents creatures with immunity to non-magical weapons from attacking the target. A 1st level Cleric with no spells is still useful because they can pretty much end an encounter with the undead in an instant!

Of course there is a difference in kind of the type of player skill that is being tested, but I feel the claim that the OSR playstyle tests player skill more than post-TSR D&D is somewhat ahistorical but also dismissive of the types of player skills cultivated by 3e/4e/5e and their derivatives.

[theminecraftbee]

vault god facts for the new vault hunters watcher

(IE: hey hermitcraft fans HERE ARE YOUR GUYS TO DO LORE WITH)

so, there are four in-game vault gods. however, you'll sometimes hear people like hbomb refer to the "vault gods" when talking about the vault hunters devs. that, or blaming the name of douwsky, the janitor. those are not the gods i'm referring to here but ask me about my iskall headcanons as a result of this sometime.

each god has altars in the vault, which will ask for a specific sacrifice in order to give you favor with that god. they also have idols, which raise your favor and have bonuses depending on which god the idol belongs to (as well as bonuses to things like amount of mana and how fast you recover from status effects).

having favor with a god can confer upon you bonuses within the vault, and has a compounding effect the more favor you have.

raising favor with one god will eventually lower favor with another (assuming update 12 keeps that mechanic), so the hermits will eventually develop certain gods they each individually have more of an affinity towards, depending on their play style. this can be seen in the vault hunters stat screen, so keep an eye out!

you used to be able to get negative favor with the vault gods, and they'd hurt you in the vault. this has largely been removed in this version of vault hunters (unless they put it back in update 12, i haven't quite caught up with the mechanical rework from this update). pete had a whole arc about this in season 2 of vh smp.

when vault god favor activates at the start of a vault, the gods have quotes they state in the chat. from these, you can pick up a bit of their personalities.

they have official art! that being said, even with this official art, people like to interpret them a lot of ways, so go crazy go nuts!

it seems the final boss may have something to do with these figures...

the four gods are as follows:

idona, the malevolent is the red vault god. their altar asks you to kill mobs as sacrifice. when you have favor with idona, you earn more soul shards while killing, have higher strength, and are more effective at killing mobs.

tenos, the omniscient is the blue vault god. their altar asks you to give up levels as a sacrifice. when you have favor with tenos, you find more items while looting, those items are rarer, and generally you'll get more out of the vault.

wendarr, the timekeeper is the yellow vault god. their altar asks you to give up mana as sacrifice. when you have favor with wendarr, mana regenerates faster, you can have more time in the vault, and generally things that take time will move more in your favor.

velara, the benevolent is the green vault god. their altar asks you to give up health as sacrifice. when you have favor with velara, you can get regeneration, have more hearts, and generally you'll be healthier and heal faster. additionally, velara is the god that punishes you for using healing potions in the vault by cutting your healing efficiency by a large amount. only use vault potions if you don't want to anger them.

and that's some vault gods knowledge for you to lore with! have fun! :D