#chapter rerolled

[salted15]

art dump

(shamton by @cyus-on-the-internet !!)

[ripplefields]

I STILL HEART THEM SO BAD . DESIGNS ARE @the-cactus-taco 's . MY FAVORITE GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[theoretical-tactician]

For the first time in my life, I have genuinely contemplated letting one of my units stay dead because FUCK ETIE AND HER SHIT STATS.

[lovphobic]

but yeah weve been 'co-op'ing it all night. he just tells me where to move his characters. decisions to make. etc. and i got rolled laura...... BECAUSE OF COURSE

[captorcorp]

i started playing tokyo debunker bc it was recommended on the app store. it's ok. why are the gatcha/battle/diamond systems so ass though

[obsidiinium]

Chapter 5: One Endless Darkness.

Part 5

—-

“Bring the other.” Says the half-elf, and from a tree above a Giant Wolf Spider drops down. Lilli feels unable to resist or turnaround to see but she gets the sense that the spider has grabbed a now unmoving Zythraul and is carrying them along. They walk further into the graveyard, from the way the two figures came from. It’s just a short walk before they come to another mausoleum, who’s name Lilli can’t make out. The giant spider nudges Lilli forwards as it carries Zythraul inside. The hooded figure steps behind a statue of some long dead noble and Lilli hears a creak and a thunk.

“Come here.” Lilli shakes her head but does what she is told. The half-elf goes to put a blindfold on her. Lilli realises she doesn’t need to do what he says, and takes a step backwards.

“No. I don’t think I will.” She turns, intending to escape, but comes face to face with the giant spider. Zythraul is blindfolded, gagged and bound in webbing on the spider’s back. The spider hisses and lunges at Lilli. It’s fangs connect with one of her arms and lilli feels an illness start pumping up her arm. She steps backwards instinctively and the half-elf takes this opportunity to fling the blindfold around lilli’s eyes, and then another one in her mouth. Fromm behind, she hears Zythraul start protesting loudly behind their own gag. She can feel herself being pushed down a steep set of stairs and through the gaps in her blindfold sees only darkenss. They are led down and through a winding trail that she does her best to keep track of. They arrive and stop, in what sounds like a room, with sounds of speech echoing throughout. Lilli feels herself pushed into a position before feeling something cold and metal wrap around her wrists and feet, her blindfold removed. the half elf is in front of her, sneering. Glancing around quickly Lilli can see Zythraul in a similar predicament, similarly chained up to the wall. their jaws still bound shut with webbing, but still managing a rumbling snarl as the hooded figure finishes chaining them up.

In the middle of the room - those mysterious catacombs under the graveyard Lilli had heard rumours of - was a single chair, facing away from them with another writhing humanoid chained up to it. The hooded figure walks away from Zythraul and in front of the other seated figure.

“Your trial begins. Become one of us or become empty; forfeit yourself to our lord.” The figure in the chair tries to writhe itself free but to no avail. The hooded figure points it’s staff at a wall and a portal opens in front of the chair. A small swarm of crawling monstrosities rushes out of the portal and straight at the bound figure. They crawl up and all over him. One melts into goo and slides into the figure’s nose, his mouth, eyes and ears. The figure screams through it’s gag and starts to convulse. The rest of the swarm pour off him and return though the portal. He stops convulsing. The hooded man motions to the half-elf who steps forwards to untie them. As he is untied he slumps forwards, before standing, unnaturally still.

The hooded one says something in undercommon. Lilli hears him say “All hail, What Lurks Below.” The prisoner does not respond. the hooded figure tries once more; no response. The hooded figure scoffs.

“A failure. Toss him to the streets like the others.” The half elf nods and points the giant spider at him, who binds him in webbing and carries him away. The hooded figure turns to Zythraul.

“You look strong. You will make an excellent follower of our lord.” He taps Zythraul on the head; they stop struggling. Zythraul allows the figure to unbind them and be guided to the chair, where they are re-bound. Lilli struggles furiously against her bonds, to no avail. She manages to wiggle her hand into her pocket, looking something - anything - of use. It lands on the arcane focus. Her fist wraps around the focus as she screams under her gag, trying to get Zyth’s attention and aching to help. A coil of darkness erupts from her pocket as the hooded figure re-opens the portal; more of those small crawling things appear once more. They swarm towards Zythraul. The darkenss that erupted from Lilli’s pocket forms into the shape of a humanoid being; they appear as a tiefling but with midnight skin the same colour as the obsidian focus, floating just in front of Lilli. The hooded figure does not notice. Lilli manages to spit out her gag and shout “HELP US!” The being nods and turns. Every living being in the room feels a voice in their head utter a single command.

FLEE.

The small swarming creatures freeze in place halfway up Zythraul’s body. They leap off through Dragonborn and scarper back towards the portal. The hooded figure startles, turns to see the being floating in front of Lilli and screeches, throwing himself backwards, heading for the portal also.

“Get us out of here!” Lilli shouts again.

WHERE TO?

Lilli looks at Zythraul, still motionless in the chair.

“The temple of Bahamut. Neverwinter. They’ll help us.” The being nods and stretches its arms wide. Lilli is enveloped in darkness and she feels a magic pulse ripple past; teleportation magic. When the darkness fades, Lilli finds herself lying in the aisle of the central cathedral of the Temple of Bahamut. Looking around frantically, she finds Zythraul standing, facing away, looking at the statue of Bahamut. Lilli runs up to them. Their face is blank. There’s no reaction to lilli’s appearance at their side.

“Zythraul? Zyth? zythraul? You there? Hey, not funny. Zee…” Zythraul turns to look at Lilli but doesn’t respond.

Lilli looks around frantically for someone - the being that got them here or one of the temple clergy. the being is nowhere to be seen.

“Uh.. Help? Help! Someone!?” There is a stirring from one of the side rooms, and Focus appears.

“Oh, Lilli, Zythraul. Hey ther-“

“Oh good! Focus, I think there’s something wrong with Zythraul. Help me.” Focus stutters, glancing between the two adventurers.

“Or find someone that can! Go!” The cleric jumps with a start and takes off.

“Zee, please, if you’re in there: talk to me.”

Zythraul goes to speak, but a language Lilli has never heard comes out their mouth. They turn away and go to walk away from lilli.

“No! Zythraul! Please stop!” The dragonborn freezes in place as Lilli commands, infusing her words with magic.

“Lilli, what’s happening? Zythraul?” Holme appears.

“I don’t... I don’t know. We were attacked… Captured… These things swarmed Zee but we got away.. Now its like they don’t even know me..”

Holme looks up at Zythraul. A flash of platinum energy fills her eyes momentarily and she frowns. Glancing at focus, still standing nearby looking concerned, Holme says,

“You saw that too? Zythraul has never harboured a dark energy like that before. Help me, Focus.”

They both move to stand on either side of the dragonborn. Focus places a hand on their shoulder, holme takes one of their hands. The two of them close their eyes and Zythraul is surrounded in platinum light. The Paladin screeches; not in their normal voice but in an abyssal monstrous kind of way. Zythraul falls to their hands and knees and retches violently, throwing something up that Lilli immediately recognises as one of the swarming things from the mausoleum. Before she can react it scarpers down the aisle and towards the door. Focus sees it go and throws a hand out, launching a gout of platinum flame at the thing. It hits but only singes it slightly as it escapes out the front door.

Lilli kneels down next to Zythraul who now lays motionless in the ground. They aren’t moving. Or breathing.

“Uhhh. Holme! Help! They’re not breathing!” she struggles to rolls Zythraul onto their back. Nothing. Lilli’s world goes silent. She can hear Holme shouting in the background. She vaguely sees Focus rush off and Holme kneel down in front of the motionless dragonborn, glowing with radiant energy before rolling back onto her heels in defeat. Holme says nothing to Lilli, but her eyes say it for her. Lilli grabs the arcane focus and screams at it, at the void, at the unfairness of it all, pleading for help again, but.. nothing. No mystical obsidian being appears this time to rescue them.

Lilli remains by Zythraul’s side for an age, sobbing gently into the Dragonborn’s chest. Eventually she is nudged by a sorrowful Holme who takes Lilli’s hand, moving her away from the body of her friend. A group of temple acolytes - including Focus - encircle Zythraul and lift them up, as gently as is possible for the body of the dragonborn. Lilli goes to protest but holme squeezes her hand. They follow the acolytes as they move to a side room of the temple; a simple bed with a window that overlooks the temple garden. A room for mourning and preparing the dead. Zythraul is changed into ceremonial robes of Bahamut and their belonging are taken to be cleaned, repaired and polished. Lilli has a vague recollection of these happenings as she sits and holds the cold and unmoving hand of her closest friend.

[vividblaze]

watakushi

[beautiful-songbird]

uGHHHH I HATE EDITING

Why can't my writing just be perfect on the first try????

[ersatz-anomaly]

9/10 demand Master Mode completion. Guess I’m not finishing chapter 3 of Cookie Odyssey until… 2269 at the earliest

[tigertorpor]

BSD chapter 116 spoilers!

Do not appreciate the new dads I think Aya should reroll.

[white-weasel]

Film Reroll’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

[gorbalsvampire]

Gehenna War

It's pretty neat, yo.

Like Blood-Stained Love, it transforms the core "personal and political" horror of Vampire into another subgenre. Unlike Blood-Stained Love, it has a lot of concrete advice for Storytellers on structuring scenes, assembling pools, building characters to interact with, and making that subgenre work at the table.

An effort has been made, here. There's a little chart in the introduction claiming that Chapters 2 and 3, and the Appendices, will be of use to any action chronicle, be it more high concept or street level, and having read the durn things I think that claim's borne out. I'm gonna talk about those sections first, and later loop back around to the specifically Gehenna War stuff.

Chapter 2 has neat archetypes for characters in various armed conflict roles - generals, spies, intelligencers, recruits, veterans - with recommendations for priority stats rather than statblocks, so these can be flipped for player or Storyteller use. Suggestions for bonus XP amounts if you want more powerful starting characters, and focused specialisations that advise you to focus particular areas of your character sheet - almost like soft classes, or playbooks. A handful of new Merits and Flaws (one of which is getting slammed onto Penny), and a mixed bag of Discipline powers. Bloodform is back? Woo! There are "reroll Rouse checks for raising this one Attribute or using this one Discipline" openers for the Physical Disciplines? Swing and a miss, more filler. There's two incredible new high-end Blood Sorcery rituals (I shall be using both of them very soon), and some funky Thin-Blood Alchemy if you want your Duskborn to join a Methuselah cult.

Then: advice on running Basic Combat, and explicit guidance on the modularity of the Advanced Combat rules, and a few new ones. This is brilliant stuff for new Storytellers, reflective of the demand for the Combat Primer, and it's given me some ideas I didn't have before, and ALSO. VINDICATION. OBSERVE.

One of the things that waters down play over time is if the characters need to build the same dice pool every time for the same task. To avoid this, Storytellers should vary the traits involved according to the situation, to keep things interesting and to curb players trying to optimize their pools.

Leaving aside that awful syntax at the start - "Play becomes predictable if the characters need to build the same dice pool every time they attempt a task" - activate your voice, and dismiss "is" clauses, you cowards! - anyway, leaving that aside, this is how I've been doing things all along and I love that a book explicitly says "do it and don't get hung up on the exact RAW every time."

Car chase mechanics, cute new gear (I like the Scourge Blades, nasty-ass duelling swords that delay vampiric healing). Then it's on to story advice!

Chapter Three does something I wish Blood-Stained Love had done for romance: getting into the structure of action stories, how action interacts with other genre qualifiers (crime, horror, survival, thriller etc.), the escalating role of villains - like, actual formalist thinking about how stories work. We then get some mechanical advice on how to shift the mode of play, how to approach things like Hunger and Frenzy to make them more or less of a factor. It's short, but it's fuckin' GOOD.

Appendix I is all about dice. When you should and shouldn't roll, as opposed to taking half. Grouping those moments into broad types by what they do to the emergent story. How to add variation with tracker rolls or unusual dice pools. How to manage failures on tests and what to offer players to keep the story moving. And, most important of all, how to deal with the Beast, going through each Skill and showing how the Beast impacts a Messy Critical (still a success, remember!) or a Bestial Failure.

You need this Appendix. The corebook needed this appendix. Maybe it took six years of best practice and sharing ideas to get these ideas fully understood. Maybe if there'd been one dev team since the start we might have had this sooner. At least we have it now.

I'll talk about the Gehenna War itself in a follow-up post. That's Chapters One, Four, Five and Six, and Appendix II.

[winged-void]

favorite feature of 3ds or newer FE games?

and maybe also least favorite?

The obvious winner here is mila's turnwheel/ divine pulse.

I think it's such a smart solution, because beyond it getting rid of the pain of dying to a random crit and losing an hour or more of progress, it encourages players to make more aggressive and creative plays.

Before turnwheel, there was a real problem where newer players would just turtle and bait out enemies in the slowest and least risky way. And like, why wouldn't you play scared? Any misstep or bit of bad luck could mean you have to replay the whole chapter!

But turnwheel allows you to try out aggressive plays without worrying about losing all your progress, but it doesn't let you just reroll RNs until you get the one you want.

Genuinely a wonderful feature that encourages players to play the game in a more fun and engaging way. Unmatched.

[sullustangin]

ruminating on the changes.

I’m not the worst off. The eye wrinkles on Eva aren’t apparent in all scenes. Eyebags, blotchy skin on Chiss/Mirialan/Sith, and resting emo face are harder to ignore.

My problem is that it’s broken my suspension of disbelief about rolling a new version of the character. I can’t buy that this toon is 19-year-old Eva making a run to Ord Mantell with some blasters. Sure, Eva after carbonite, the Alliance, marrying Theron, and having one kid - the Eva of now. But starting over as a smug with those wrinkles on Chapter 1 with no ability tone it down or turn it off? Problem.

3. This leads to my current problem of REALLY wanting the new armor but not wanting to pony up for it until Broadsword addresses the concerns mentioned in #1. I actually really like the rest of the content they put in (the mount, the encounters, the clothes). However, I am utterly demotivated about rerolling my blorbo because I can’t buy the fact she’s 19. The old faces could let you make your character whatever age you wanted. Eva at 19, Eva at a well-moisturized 35- sure! This?

The current Eva has worse wrinkles than I do at … somewhere closer to Theron and Lana’s ages. And that just stalls me out when I think about rerolling. And that’s a problem, because many of us have the One and we replay their story over and over again. Messing with someone’s toon here or in tabletop gaming is a deeply personal thing. I hope Broadsword figures out that Space Barbies IS the endgame for a lot of people.

[autism-corner]

be warned about the person i become when a new event with either blade or yakumo drops.

i should redownload nucarnival again....

[kriimhild]

Me: DL Moon loves eggs.

Followers: DL Moon loves eggs.

My brain: 🎵... and now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs / so I'm roughly the size of a barge!🎵

don't mind me i'm just working on the next chapter and rerolled some doodles to get in mood and i found E G G ...

E G G