#first time it loads more posts.

[corset]

I love when you're trying to change your header on mobile and it keeps automatically zooming in and moving it around over and over every time you save it and so you just have to stubbornly keep changing it until it sticks. My favorite app

[heybiji]

hi i found your page cause of your Masks art!!

imma be running a game of masks and was wondering if you have any tips

Oh hello! Very cool you're gonna run a MASKS game, it can be a lot of fun!

I'm not sure how helpful my advice will be since I'm still learning and am not sure how well I actually run the game haha, but for starters there's a whole lot of great advice on Reddit that will help with the mechanics and the structure of the game. In my opinion, the Principles section in the GM part of the core book is critical and succinct and is great advice for running ttrpgs in general.

my top advice is:

"We play to get the next issue picked up!"

Play the game like we want people to buy the next issue and not put the series down! Take chances! Make big choices! Make it interesting! Be bold!!

other things:

Theme. Establish the themes of your story early on. This will help you understand how the world and story should respond to the PCs. And make the themes interesting to you! For example, beyond the general coming-of-age story themes already built into the character arcs, I lean heavily into the concepts of fame, celebrity, and the 24-hour news cycle. And all the things that were going on in the early 2000s.

Be a Fan of the PCs. This is my favorite rule from The Principles. Make sure all your players soak this rule in. The MASKS mechanics mean characters will often make less-than-optimal decisions, so players must feel supported in their character choices. You should be a fan of the characters, and so should your players! They should want to help bring out every character's arc, not just their own.

Treating Human Life as Meaningful is what Makes Threats Real. This is another principle, but yeah, make the world's NPCs feel like they matter, and that will make the world worth protecting. Treat them as people. Give everyone Drives, not just your Villains. Mentally treating even non-villain NPCs as having Conditions can do a lot to help with characterization.

Condense. Condense your world, your NPCs, make the world feel smaller. In our game, for example, having the Protege's mentor also be the same superhero who saved the Delinquent years ago was a great decision.

Playlists. I have a bunch of different playlists for the campaign, from a big one of music of the time (our game is set in 2004) to playlists for important NPCs, to playlists I asked my players to curate for their characters. Music inspires me a bunch, a song can help create a villain for me, and I also like choosing a different "ending" song for every episode based on whatever happened.

Stories. Okay, here's the thing. I don't really care much for superhero stories. Why did I choose to run MASKS, you ask? Because of the emotion-based mechanics. That's my shit. But anyway, I don't take in much superhero media... But I do LOVE movies and television and stories in general, and I think taking in a lot of "short stories" is helpful to develop an instinct on how to pace a story, make a character or moment memorable, etc. And because MASKS has an episodic nature, this is extremely important! The sheer amount of movies I've watched has helped me a whole bunch, since they have to get the Beginning, Middle, and End done within such a short time frame.

Don't Wait. This is an instinct I've picked up from some of my favorite media. Don't wait for The big important moment. Make a lot of big important moments, and make the characters have to make a lot of important choices, and keep the momentum going. Paint yourself into a corner and then force yourself to think of ways out! It makes the story more interesting. (this may not apply to everyone, I get this kind of mindset from shows like Breaking Bad and Succession, which for your story could be too much haha)

Everyone Works. Okay, I am not a benevolent, sweet GM, I will not smile with tears in my eyes and quietly work away and accept that without complaint. no way. I make my players help me a lot. I'm gonna whine. Guys I'm doing so much work! Guys this is hard! Weeehhh! MAKE THEM HELP YOU. RUNNING A GAME IS SOOOOO MUCH WORK OH MY GOD IT'S SOOOOOO MUCH WORK!!! Ask them to take notes! Ask them to treat the world with sincerity! Ask them to make NPCs! Ask them to play NPCs! Ask them to help fill out the world! Ask them to tell you what their character wants to do next so you have extra time to consider it! Ask them to make playlists for their characters to help you figure out how to engage with them! Don't let them just show up on playday!! I'm a "you get what you give" kind of GM. You're a player too and you deserve to enjoy the game as well, and having the other players help you helps a BUNCH. PUT THEM TO WORK.

what else. uh. visuals help a lot with engagement so i subscribed to a bunch of modern battlemap patreons. i run using Foundry which lists the rules upon every roll which is great for me, someone with horrid memory. if you're lucky and favored by god, you'll have a benevolent player that will be the scribe for your sessions and log everything down so they can be referred back to (again, great for someone like me with a horrid memory). remember to give focus to the PC's out-of-costume lives as well. make NPCs in response to your PCs (superheroes, villains, touch on something of a PC in the creation process). be silly. be serious. be sincere.

i'm still figuring out how to run the game, maybe i'll have better advice on a later day, but i hope this can help some! sorry this is longwinded and more a stream of consciousness than it is succinct.

[marsbotz]

shout out to whatever the hell these two had going on

og images from pinterest tee hee

[serendipitous-mage]

AHAHAAHAHJAAJSBSMDJDNDKMXBWHXI???1??!?!!??

[communistkenobi]

I’m curious if other communists have like a religious relationship to their political beliefs for lack of a better word? That’s not a good word to use but I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m solidly atheist but all of the feelings and emotions religious people talk about, revelation and spiritual connection to community and so on are all things I experience pretty regularly and I interpret those feelings as fundamentally communist. the way I take in and absorb information in particular feels revelatory in a religious sense. I’m pretty sure this is fairly common with MLs but I’m curious about it in general

[psychiclounge]

I don't see a whole lot of fanmission discussion on here, which is a bummer considering they're such a huge part of the classic Thief community and why it's endured so long. With some of the Black Parade hype recently, I think now is the perfect time for this- here's my personal list of TDP/TMA fanmission recs! Not in any particular order (aside from the first 3-5 or so for each game, which are my personal all-time favorites) these are just taken from my highest rated fanmissions in FMSel. Each one links to a Thief Guild page where you can find the mission briefing, screenshots, and downloads.

Thief Gold: Ascend the Dim Valley Endless Rain Rose Garden The Scarlet Cascabel The Black Parade Catacombs of Knoss Alcazar Chalice of Souls Making a Profit The Sound of a Burrick in a Room Whispers Below the Cobblestone Between These Dark Walls Dirty Money Falling, In Love Autumn in Lampfire Hills

Thief 2: Compulsory Egress Into the Odd Bad Debts, and its sequel Disorientation (part of the Talbot series by Melan, along with TG FM Rose Garden) The Violent End of Duncan Malveine Feast of Pilgrims Ominous Bequest, and its sequel Broken Triad Rose Cottage Behind Closed Doors The Turning of the Leaves King Abedzen's Tomb Legacy of Knoss (sequel to TG FM Catacombs of Knoss) The Ties That Bind (the first FM I recall ever playing and, imo, a cute introduction to FMs as a whole) Old Habits and Dead Wives Vanishing Point All For a Night's Sleep The Last Lighthouse Keeper Cracks in the Glass Bloodmist Tower Finals at the Academy Heist at Hilbert's Highrise Hotel The Sun Within and the Sun Without Malazar's Inscrutable Tower Ravensreach Coaxing the Spirit Keyhunt

Here's a TTLG thread on how to set up both games for playing FMs. I personally don't use any fancy loaders, FMSel will be what you get by default, it works perfect and is all you need. TTLG overall is just a great place to be, it's good for FM hints/walkthroughs/recs and general Thief/Looking Glass discussion.

Ideally you have T2Fix already installed, but for setting your game up for FMs, you should do a quick reinstall and make sure that two options are ticked: common script modules, and T2FMDML. T2FMDML is a collection of fixes for Thief 2 FMs that wouldn't otherwise play nice with NewDark, and the scripts as I understand are for FMs that need them but either come packaged with older versions or without the scripts at all- there's a lot of older FMs out there that will be broken for you if you don't have both installed. You can just rerun the T2Fix installer for this, you don't need to reinstall the game or anything.

Thief Guild is where all the links lead, and it's a great site for finding FMs. You can filter by genre (city, thieves' highway, cathedral, etc.) or look through the usermade collections- for a start, I'd recommend looking at the collections specifically to find classic/early FMs, a category that I know I'm not hitting on much in my list here but is definitely worth checking out if you're at all interested.

Bonus Dark Mod rec: The Dark Mod is a fanmade, free, Thief-inspired stealth game. I haven't played nearly as many missions for it as I have for Thief, but it's still absolutely worth checking out to see if it clicks for you. If you only play one TDM mission, though, my personal rec is Iris.

If you have any, add on with your own FM recs also! Feel free to send asks or dms about anything FM-related, as well ^^ I'm always looking for more to check out, and always open to talk about them if anyone wants.

[tibialtybalt]

Still thinking about that time my friend during their blind isat playthrough got the "what was that?" achievement on the same loop they got "(loads dagger) house's haunted"

[nashishishi]

idk how to explain to people that the reason i haven't been online much is because the school i go to has barely any signal and the home i live in currently also doesn't really have any good signal and there is/was a typhoon passing through the country so it made the signal problem worse, so the only time i could get signal was when i went out on the weekends, but there's been a shit ton of smog in my area recently, either from the abnormally active volcano nearby or from the horrible pollution, both of which render the air quality unhealthy, meaning i get sick more easily because i'm either inhaling sulfur dioxide from the ashfall OR i'm inhaling sulfur dioxide from the pollution, meaning i'm stuck inside my house with horrible signal for most of the day

and the typhoon that is/was passing through the country means that it's also been raining quite a bit recently, and rain + sulfur dioxide = acid rain, meaning i REALLY can't go outside, meaning no signal for me. ever.

also, even when i Can go outside, it's usually just to run errands. obviously it's not advised to go outside if it's not necessary, so i only ever go out when i need to do my groceries or something like that, which means the only time i can get signal is also the one and only time in the entire week when all i do for 2 hours is cross a bunch of streets, run down supermarket aisles, try not to let my wallet get stolen, and then walk back home. none of which are activities that i can do while also diverting part of my attention to scrolling or messaging on my phone

so yk like if i could explain all that in like 1 or 2 sentences that would be great. it's just that if i say "the whole goddamn country (including me) is in a crisis rn srry" and it hasn't reached world news yet, it almost sounds like a non-issue (or just a straight-up lie) if i use it as an excuse

[wreckedhoney]

"WONDERFUL SHOW TONIGHT, FORREST."

a KILLER FREQUENCY Marie Campbell/Forrest Nash ship playlist on YT

"Good to talk to you again, Forrest. You know, I've really enjoyed our chats tonight." "I guess we've had some moments."

Tracklist under the cut

Is Everybody Going Crazy? - Nothing But Thieves / The Perfect Girl - Mareux / We Don't Have To Dance - Andy Black / Night Issues (Nightcall x Daddy Issues) Mashup/Remix - FuturePastPerson / "Bassically" - Tei Shi / Cold Summer - Mareux / Diet Mountain Dew - Lana Del Rey / Destruction Of Us - Mr.Kitty / Teeth - 5 Seconds of Summer / HUSH - Ari Abdul / DTLA - Mareux / Make You Mine - Madison Beer / FEAR YOU - Kat Von D / Bad Romance - Lady Gaga / Dark All Day - GUNSHIP / Maniac (feat. Conor Mason of Nothing But Thieves) - AWOLNATION

[muninnhuginn]

Link Click Meta(ish) Posts

Cheng Xiaoshi and "acting out" during missions (note: written mid-s1)

Lu Guang vs Li Tianchen's approaches to grief

Qiao Ling and Lu Guang's relationship

Protection as a leash ft LTC and LG

Powers: ShiGuang vs LTC and LTX

Li Tianchen, touch, and relationships

Li Tianxi and Li Tianchen, self-blame

The rhythm of the interrogation

Lu Guang and deflection

General musings on the themes around 'fate' in Link Click

General timeline surrounding the twins (written s2e11 - this is the final version)

Qiao Ling's arc as of s2

Bonus non-meta: Fic recs part 1 (dated Nov 2023), fic recs part 2 (dated July 2024)

[drowningindango]

*squints at my tumblr drafts*

Okay…how many of you are there? And I mean, how many are REALLY there? Because it says there 273 drafts, but it already said that…. 20 posts that I queued/deleted/posted ago…. It went down to 271 at one point, but now it says 273 drafts again and something doesn’t add up here 🤔🤨

[arolesbianism]

Cons of updating the wiki: I have to actually figure out what the fuck is up with "a seed is planted"

[poppyseed799]

I feel like life series fanon jimmy is kind of mischaracterized and there’s an easy way to make sure you’re doing it right: he has a lot of unearned confidence

[mujori]

time to gut out some stuff out of my mods folder

[lustbcrne]

Alhaitham tends to lean toward being a service top. However, he is 1) okay with bottoming if his significant other wants him to be, esp if he’s allowed to still take the reins in pleasing them, and 2) is okay letting his significant other take over completely and prioritizing his pleasure if they want, BUT he will be pouty then Entire Time. Unless they can break his composure-

[shikai-the-storyteller]

This Hideduo fic that turned into me ranting about q!Fit's disabilities and q!Pac's disabilities is coming along great but it's probably going to be a "5 times" piece which means that I need to reorganize my notes again. But I'm cool with that, I'm really enjoying how this is turning out, even if it's not what I wanted it to be when I first started writing it.