#crunch the kobold

[oneclawbinthegrave]

Kobolds make for good stress toys - when you break one, not only do you get to hear its bones crack and snap, but the scales also make a lovely sound as they get crumpled! It tends to make the prettiest screams, too. Shame you can only really do this once... but then you toss it in the bin and go grab another one!

[coyoteworks]

MARTch, day 21: midnight

[digestabold]

Hard, Soft, and Nap for the vore ask

I really like tummy noises, from active digestion to just whatever ambient sounds they make, how about you?

Hard: Do you like hard vore If so why? If not why?

It's a sometimes food for sure. I really have to be in the mood for something that brutal, but... when I am? It can be a little insatiable... a great desire to be torn apart and treated like the slab of meat I am >/w/<

Soft: Do you like soft vore? If so why? If not why?

Soft is my go-to mode, even with digestion! I think this comes mostly from being very pain averse in this vessel, so even if I'm getting gurgled for good, I prefer it to be an ecstatic experience, the melting feeling like a fuzzy blanket~

Nap time: Have you ever slept to stomach noises before? If so when was the last time? If not why?

I have not! Noises alone don't tend to do *too* much for me... closest is when my gf would mush my head against her grumbling gut and tease me about being next 🥴

[apothecaryassistant]

Grebluns

[cobalt-the-noodle]

but have you considered:

Quartz with titanium impurities

The urge to eat crystallized bismuth grows every single fucking day, shit looks scrumptious

[vorekody]

@koboldpreydrive crunching on kobold

[somanykobolds]

Currently I'm a pile of anxious kobolds, waiting for a game that's out in something like a month. anxious because Dragon Age is nothing short of a autistic interest and obsession even. This is fuel for dreaming, writing, roleplaying, existing through this hellhole of a late capitalist dying society that is the world around.

There is something awful to know that Bioware (and EA ofc) is an awful part of the problem, regarding how they deal with their employees, unions and such (crunch, "bioware magic" and all that shit honestly).

Yet, here we are, waiting for it and hoping we will breath a bit more easily once it's here. At least for a while. Really not a great time to exist, but there is no way we surrender.

I love my partners. I love my friends. I love being alive, no matter how hard it is. Plus, my cat would never forgive me if I was to go forever.

So yeah, see you the 31st of october, because thought like "this game is REALLY GOOD" and "The way Bioware act with their staff IS a PROBLEM" can and should coexist. At least one of them is true already anyway.

[polycraftory]

We are back with this week's book haul! This is everything we got between 9/24/24 - 9/30/24.

Tuna (our littol cat friend) is shocked! Shocked!!! at what a good deal we were able to get on the full series of Solo Leveling. It was too good a deal to pass up (even this close to NYCC when we are trying to save money😅)! We also snagged @rainbowcrate's edition of Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender, which is another book with polyamory rep to add to our collection!

It was the best sort of surprise when my very first Rosemei danmei novel: You're Too OP! by Yi Xiu Luo arrived from Yiggybean (Rosemei's US distributor) this week. I am really working to expand our danmei collection beyond what Seven Seas is translating.

Also!!! TWO whole Kickstarters that I backed came in this week: Many Hands, a polyamory erotica anthology, by @duckprintspress and the Game Master's Guide for the Tales of the Valiant TTRPG by Kobold Press.

We are really in the depths of con crunch in this last few weeks before NYCC, but we are still trying to make time to read so wish us luck!

[ragsy]

Hi might I humbly suggest a kobold who stole a bag of cheetos from a pantry

Threatening sounds of crunching from around the corner

[lowlevelkoboldadventures]

Fun Kobold Fact #46: 💀🦎

Skeleton kobolds do exist, and still enjoy crunching up ores and rocks as much as us living ones do! Strangely enough, they also still have preferences when it comes to taste, but nobody knows how they can tell since they don’t have tongues! 🤔

[purpletyrant]

two kobolds

this took, no joke, over two weeks because i was exclusively working on it at my job. had been meaning to draw these two for a little while, but the idea for the frame came from rereading/catching up with witch hat atelier. i think i was also inspired by the work of vesta z, probably

gwydion is very much a trickster figure for seelie the first few times they meet. shes also the only kobold theyve ever met. i have half-formed ideas of her roping them into whatever schemes she gets into to stay somewhat comfortable in a crumbling, besieged state whose ordinary citizens are starting to really feel the crunch. i think it would be interesting for them to get up to their own activities and come into their own in contrast to orchidees contentedness to stick her head in the sand and lament about how her life sucks and do nothing about it :)))))

[keganexe]

D&D, The OGL, and a Better Future for Actual Play Content

So this is spinning out of a post I made on twitter about how I legitimately believe the future of Actual Play (or AP for short) is in working alongside indie rpg folks

You can see that thread here, but I'm gonna recap anyway

Lets talk about the OGL and D&D first

Thanks to some great reporting from journalist Linda Codega (@lincodega), we know the general shape of the new Open Gaming License (or OGL) that WotC is running for Dungeons & Dragons moving forward. In short it sucks, I am not super interested in getting into it here, especially because Linda (once again) did really solid reporting here. Generally this spells a very bad time for a number of bigger third party creators (Green Ronin, Paizo, Kobold Press, probably Critical Role if we assume they aren't in on it which I would not assume tbh), and it also spells out specifically that Hasbro's desire to monetize even harder is in full swing.

One of the more interesting bits to this whole thing to me though, is how Wizards is looking at Fan Content, and I think its very likely this is going to be a major rub for AP Producers in the future. The OGL is now much clearer that AP work needs to fall under the Fan Content Policy, which means in broad strokes there is to be no monetization of your content. This is an old policy, but one I think a lot of folks are blithely unaware of. Specifically

You can't require payments, downloads, subscriptions, or email registration to access your content

You can't sell or license this content to a third party

Your content must be free for others to view, access, share, and use without paying you anything, obtaining approval, or giving credit.

You specifically can run things like a Ko-Fi or a Patreon, but you can't hide content behind a paywall. It also is... unclear on the ability to do things like live shows for money? I'm not a lawyer.

Regardless I think its high time people left, and that brings me to part 2 here

D&D and APs

Fundamentally D&D has always been bad for Actual Play. It's a quagmire of conflicting rules and bubblegum fixes, it crunches in weird spots, it doesn't do half the things people play it for, and its expensive to get into. Furthermore, it requires a lot of prep, it doesn't adapt well, and fundamentally it makes bad radio.

Where we see the most successes in the niche of D&D APs is hyper edited, super slick, and wildly unachievable setups; with major changes in rules, players who can make a living doing it, and entire production studios working on them (looking at you Critical Role, Dimension 20, etc). Within these (and within a ton of other APs) we also see a wild amount of homebrew to bend an inflexible and inelegant system into something that tells the stories we're interested in telling in games. Be this the wild changes to death in Dimension 20's Neverafter, full new classes and mechanics across Critical Role, magic items and homebrew in every AP I can think of, etc.

Generally also D&D is bad radio. The exacting measurements on battle maps don't make great Theatre of the Mind (certainly not as well as games designed for it), the rolls + stat modifiers + misc. shit on your sheet requires a lot of boring and frequently had to follow math*, etc.

Point here being, when we see it done well** it's less on the hands of D&D being good at these things, and more because production is changing major aspects of gameplay to make a game make good radio.

We should also talk about the messy legacy of D&D, but honestly that would be a few thousand extra words from me, and I don't have it in me. If the OGL doesn't scare you, it's worth thinking about what you're cosigning by staying around. Here's some extra articles if this is the first you're hearing about Wizards having major problems tho

Why Race is Still a Problem by Linda Codega gets into a lot of it

Wizards is still making money off of Oriental Adventures (and an article on that)

Mike Mearls still works there, this was weirdly hard to find a good article on, but here's a reddit post where its discussed

A Better Future for Actual Plays

This brings me to the point of this thread, which is that I don't think the future of Actual Plays has ever... actually been in making 5e content. This is a thing I feel pretty strongly about as a person who makes non-5e ap content (and this is a bias, sure). To me a better future has always been in indie rpgs, and in making content hand in hand with designers and producers working together.

What does this look like though? In short it rocks, and it's a thing bigger folks in the AP sphere are clearly already looking it. I'll list some examples below, and then I'll talk more about what it looks like on smaller scale, and what my experience with that has been like

So first off here's a few examples of what this looks like on the higher production end of the scale. I'm specifically looking at examples of campaign APs, working with the designer of the system, and not one shots which are doing this a bunch already.

Dimension 20's Shriek Week with Gabe Hick's Mythic System

Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast Podcast getting made alongside Possum Creek (it is a series of one shots, but also a shared universe, so I'm counting it here)

Into the Motherlands moving to their own system eventually

Iron Edda: Puppet Strings with Tracy Hicks on the One Shot Podcasting Network (edited to add this example)

On the smaller end this is something I legitimately have some experience with, and this is where the thread was always heading. Let's talk about Renegade Racers, the game I made specifically for one person, what that has looked like for me, and why I think it's the future of APs to make content this way.

So a while ago I got on a Fast & Furious bend and watched all the movies. Not content to just watch movies though, I talked to some folks about if they had seen games based on it, and got linked to a video of @0sarahxfrank0 running a F&F inspired honey heist hack (I'm not gonna link it because the community it spun out of has had a lot happen and I don't wanna give them clicks tbh).

The short version of this is that I watched the game, built a system to better handle what folks were trying to do, and then sent it back to Sarah. She loved it. We made some changes, we rebuilt around the players and stories people wanted to tell, we released the game and the first AP together afterwards. Now Sarah and I do a lot of work together, we're planning bigger things like this for the future, and it's so far been a lot of fun and super rewarding for everyone involved.

We've seen some other stuff like this as well, even if not in campaign play. Offhand, Plus One Exp's home Down We Go system is a great example of working with a designer to stamp a system as the home system, and find community within it. We've been able to watch sorta in slow motion as DWG moved from a little one page OSR hack that potentially gets lost in the shuffle, to something big and exciting that both parties are happy to put a stamp on.

This is the exact future I see for AP campaign play, and not a wild dream I don't think.

What does Actual Play look like when it's tied to designers who want to help you tell your stories in the ways you want to tell them? What would it look like for a community to say "actually we've had enough"? What happens when we work with people who give a shit instead of faceless megacorps? What does it look like when we invest in people willing to invest in us?

I've seen the future and it's golden, we just have to reach for it.

*hard to follow in that if the players aren't saying out loud what exactly they're adding the numbers are nonsense **by well here I do mean "expensive and award winning" I do not mean I think they're particularly master classes in game running or production, but that's a whole separate topic

[xdepthsofwinterx]

Pulled by Fate: In which Dhana is finally reunited with Elithrar (@waterdeephero @pyritea) and Deekin in Cania. {{A couple years after I promised I would write this, Baka comes back swinging with fluffy angst. Hope Dhana is as good as she used to be!}}

-

Frigid cold arched across her skin, burning bone deep. But beyond that, to a point that her very soul ached. Booted feet trudged through the snow, crunching and crimping in the deeper drifts. Cheeks burned red, and even her furs couldn't keep the cold at bay. Days, she guessed, had passed, but it could be an eternity for all she knew.

One thing was for certain. Dhana wasn't in the overworld anymore.

The Reaper had confirmed that. Sucked through to their pocket plane, face first into cool obsidian tiles, Dhana had awoken with a start. Last she knew, a denizen of Mephistopheles had thrust a greatsword through her chest. Panicking, scrambling to het feet, the meticulous monotone of the ethereal presence filled her mind.

"What is your will, sojourner?"

Now she was cast out into the baltic, infernal infested hellscape, awaiting what, she knew not. Crouched down by a measley fire, those berries filling a hole and heat in her belly for a short time. Once vibrant sepia eyes look on vacantly into the space before her.

"Deekin isn't sure, but perhaps Boss might find out?"

Those words rip her heart wide open, until she bleeds salty tears in its wake. Soft pattering, clawed feet, hopping through the snow after their leader. Her tongue feels like cotton in her mouth, her head too full of both painful and familiar memories that she feels like she might faint.

Deekin. Of course, the lovable scaley kobold hopped along beside a taller, willowy cloaked figure, with an equally familiar and graceful gait.

Hunting for recognisable features beneath the tanned, furlined cloak, Dhana spies the gorgeous shock of gingery gold hair, angular features, soft lips. Another painful clench of her heart, and her feet are stumbling after the pair in the snow.

How can she not?! Like a string of fate, her soul and being was bound to those walking only a couple feet ahead. But her throat is clenched shut with unspoken grief and need for them both. Her hand outstretched, all long, slender fingers, tattooed and calloused. Her lips part, eyes filling with tears as she wills this not to be another fever dream.

"E-Eli...thrar-"

Emotion cracks her voice, turning it gravelly as it echoes out in the space between them. The reaction is instant, as if both figures before her are struck with an arrow, the taller of the two freezing in place.

Deekin is the first to turn. And when his beady eyes lock onto Dhana's form, a shrill cry of anguish and disbelief emits the kobold.

"B-Boss?!"

He doesn't wait on ceremony, doesn't care for her apologies or excuses. No, Deekin charges towards the sorceress and latches onto her leg as tightly as he can. From the wetting of her leggings, it is clear the proof reptilian is equally moved.

Instinct has her bending down to him, bundling the little fella in her arms and letting out a mournful sound as she buries her head into his scaley shoulder. She rocks him for a moment, unleashing their shared grief. When at last Dhana pulls back, warpaint smudged, eyes red and nose snuffly, her eyes catch on the sight of leather boots in her periphery.

A quiver of pure, unadulterated joy and happiness washes over her as Elithrar's face comes into full view. Golden eyes are round, tears wavering as he barely holds himself back. Straightening, the blackette barely gets a breath in before the elf is engulfing her in a tight squeeze, mouth uttering words of shaky disbelief.

"D-Dhana...God's be good."

His warmth filled her nostrils; that familiar scent of incense, musky amd slight sweat, it was all so nostalgic. Dhana let herself settle into Elithrar's tight embrace, relishing in his soft caresses to her back.

"I-I n-never thought I would

get the c-chance to see you again," The cleric squeezed her tighter, and sliding up her back as that soft, tanned nose is pressed into her shoulder. Tears trickle silently down her cheeks, pressing herself firmly against his warm form. Heart clenching, arms tightning about him, Dhana manages out words that Elithrar is also trying to communicate.

"Gods I have missed you, so much."

Fingers delve into fabric, desperately seeking more contact, the need to be closer almost all consuming.

But here, in Elithrar's arms is exactly where her heart belongs, with Deekin at their side. Just...just like old times...like it should be...

And this time, Dhana would fight tooth and nail to remain there. Even the Archdevil himself.

[hungry-blue-dragon]

"And how about you, Anon? Would you like to be stuffed before your once-in-a-lifetime trip?"

Y-yes please. You mentioned to a different anon that griffons fill you up nicely and I can't stop thinking about being your stuffed thanksgiving bird now. Talons, paws, beak, and wings bound to make me an easier meal, my belly bulging with warm, thick "stuffing", the kind of meal that would make you want to lay down afterward and bask in the feeling of fullness. At least until you belch out my acid bleached and partially dissolved skull amid a cloud of feathers. And wouldn't you know it, hollow bones make the most satisfying crunching noises beneath the weight of a dragon...

Sounds like a fine plan, little birdy~ I'm sure you'll make some very cute noises while I get ready to stuff you, and maybe if I'm hungry enough, I'll even get your head in my mouth while still on top of you. I'm sure a look into my gullet will help get you off that one last time, too, hmm~?

And yes, let's hope enough of your bones survive a nice, relaxing, post-meal stretch that I can burp some of them up relatively unharmed. I think I'd keep the skull for my hoard, but the others? I'm sure my kobolds would love the shattered remains of griffon bones after I "accidentally" test my weight on them.

[desdemonafictional]

What Can I Do For You (part 3)

further ideas I had about the Kabru/Laios QPR situation

 Laios didn’t put a lot of effort into remembering people when he didn’t have to. Assigning politicians monstrous personas secretly in his head made things easier, but it did still require conscious effort. If he tried to do it for every single person he was introduced to as king, he’d probably go insane within a week. So, it wasn’t really a surprise that he had no idea who Kabru was over there talking to right now. Although he was starting to worry that he should know, because Kabru had been talking to that same woman basically the whole night. Was she someone important?

“Tch,” said a voice somewhere around Laios’s hip.

Laios looked down to find Kabru’s halfling teammate—Mikel? Mikebell?—looking in the same direction. He and Kuro had matching dumpling skewers from the booth down the street, where an enterprising cook had set up shop for the harvest festival.

“What?” said Laios. “Do you know her too?”

“Only in the sense that I’ve known dozens of girls get that same look around Kabru,” the halfling said. Mickbell. Definitely. Probably.

Laios squinted at the woman in question. She seemed like she was having a good time. She was standing very close to Kabru, close enough that Laios felt like he’d have been chastised for doing that to a stranger.

“He never learns,” Mickbell said, with a hint of a smile that felt unpleasant to Laios. “Next thing you know, she’ll invite him to bed, and then it’ll be another month of him running himself ragged trying to find some other guy to pawn her off on. I swear half the girls in this town only have husbands because Kabru needed to get rid of them in a hurry.”

The woman bounced on her toes, autumn flowers in her hair shedding petals like snow. Laios remembered the night Kabru had offered to become his lover. It had seemed incomprehensible to Laios, at the time. Why would you offer to have sex with someone if you didn’t want the sex? What was the point?

Kabru didn’t look uncomfortable. That was, none of the cues he’d been teaching Laios to recognize stood out. He was smiling. He wasn’t pulling or even looking away. But Kabru was the one who taught Laios to recognize those things. If he didn’t want to show them, Laios had a feeling he wouldn’t.

If he didn’t want to go home with her, would he say so?

Maybe a teammate would understand. “Does he… like doing that? The first night at least?” Laios asked.

“He likes the attention, that’s what I think,” Mickbell remarked. He tore the last dumpling off the stick chewed meditatively. “Honestly I can’t even tell if he likes girls or what, he never talks about them.”

Mickbell reached around and pinched half a dumpling off Kuro’s skewer without asking. The kobold let him.

It usually happens on accident, Kabru had remarked, when Laios asked him what all that had been about. So why not do it on purpose, for once?

“If he doesn’t want people getting the wrong idea, he should stop being so friendly with everyone,” Mickbell said. “It’ll get him in trouble one of these days.”

And you’re just going to let it happen, Laios thought.

Anger itched at the back of Laios’s neck. It was like poison ivy; not scratching it put him on edge, but he knew scratching would just make things worse. Rather than say something, Laios turned and walked away without another word, leaving Mickbell sputtering in his wake.

The dirt path, littered with leaves, crunched under his boots. The half moon waxing above the castle town painted roofs and treetops with silver, a world apart from the golden glow of festival lanterns.

Laios tapped Kabru on the shoulder. The younger man startled and turned, eyes widening.

“Excuse me,” Laios said, because that was what you were supposed to say, “I need to borrow my friend for a while, miss. Actually, for the whole night. Maybe longer.”

The woman stumbled back. “Oh, um,” she said, “yes, your highness. That’s—whatever you say.”

It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know. Laios did his best not to be rude, because it wouldn’t be fair. “Please enjoy the night,” he said. “There’s spiced apple tarts over at the wagon. You should try some.”

She bobbed a quick curtsy. “Yes sir. I mean, your highness.”

Laios hooked his elbow around Kabru’s arm and pulled him away, into the safe empty avenue behind the hedges. The edge of anger was cooling, and second thoughts were setting in.

“…I probably scared her,” he murmured. “Damn. I didn’t mean to.”

“What did you mean to do?” Kabru asked him. Despite the fact that his arm was linked with Kabru’s arm, Laios had almost forgotten he was there.

“—Oh,” said Laios. He stopped walking and turned to look at his friend without entirely letting go. “Kabru, did you like her?”

Kabru gave him one of those looks that mean he wasn’t following the conversation. “She was interesting,” he answered, as if picking his words with care. “She was telling me about her family.”

“But did you want to sleep with her?” Laios pressed.

Kabru’s eyebrows jumped towards his hairline. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous? You of all people?”

“What? No,” Laios said. “But she was going to ask you to spend the night, right? If she asked, would you have said yes?”

“I might have,” Kabru allowed. “I don’t have any reason not to.”

The frustration was starting to well back up. “But did you want to? If you were attracted to her, just say so, and I’ll let you go back.”

Kabru was staring at him.

“Laios,” he said, “what the fuck?”

“It’s messed up of you to lead someone on like that,” Laios said, feeling his fists start to clench. “If you don’t like her like that, you should just say so!”

Kabru jerked away from him. “You don’t know what I want,” he snapped.

“Why won’t you just say yes or no!” Laios demanded.

“I can make my own decisions; I don’t need your permission to take a lover or not!”

“So you were just going to let her think you liked her, and then pawn her off on someone else so she wouldn’t annoy you anymore?”

“What—where are you getting this from?”

“I talked to Mickbell,” Laios ground out. “He said it’s a thing you do.”

“I can’t believe you were gossiping about me,” Kabru said. “If I wasn’t so pissed off, I’d be impressed! I didn’t know you knew how to do that!”

Laios felt as if he’d been whipped across the nose with claws. He drew back, glaring, and pulled his cloak around himself.

In the blink of an eye, Kabru’s twisted expression dropped. He covered his mouth with a hand, brows pinched. “No,” he said, “no, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”

It was one thing to hear that kind of thing from asshole strangers, but with Kabru—his friend, the first friend who was just his alone—he hadn’t been ready for it.

“Forget it,” Laios said, and left before he could make things worse.

[neververy4]

Thoughts (if any) on the Guilty Gear franchise?

Naughty gears get sent to the Gear Wiggler to atone for their crimes

They made a whole franchise of criminal gears tho?? Damn how many bad gears are out there??

“Today at the uhh. .. we’ll go with kobold, Today at the Kobold Factory, on the arm assembly line, there is a holdup. A gear is being naughty, and is skipping threads every chance it gets. Can we get it to behave, or will this gear get crunched? Find out today, on Guilty Gear” *cheesey crime show music*