#flavors of midnight gameplay

[plumbobgothica]

I feel like I've been really distracted with savefile setup, cas stuff, story photoshoots, etc, so it's been nice to finally get some actual playtime in.

[theresattrpgforthat]

any ttrpgs for spooky dark boarding school stories? gotham academy, the boarding school: las cumbres, wednesday, that kinda thing?

THEME: Dark Boarding Schools

Hello there, at first I felt like this overlapped with all of my magic school recommendations, but once I did some digging, I realized that there's a lot of big differences! That also means that there was a good number of games I haven't recommended before, so I hope there's something here that fits what you're looking for.

Tangled Blessings, by Cassi Mothwin.

On the eve of your final exam at Brackroot Academy, what mysteries, secrets, dread, and drama will you recall from your last four years of schooling?

Tangled Blessings is a solo journaling or two-player RPG inspired by dark academia media, ghost stories, and graduate school. Featuring a wizarding college, wandering specters, assigned houses, curses, devils’ bargains and more supernatural flavor, Tangled Blessings blends horror and the fantastical to help players craft a story that spans their time at the academy — culminating in one final showdown against their rival.

If your favorite stories ever involved sneaking around an ancient building, uncovering dangerous secrets, studying in a dusty library, practicing spells on the lawn, or making perilous deals with creatures lurking in the darkness… This game is for you.

Tangled Blessings is a game about discovering the dark secrets hidden behind the allure of a secret magical world. You use a tarot deck to determine your character’s placement at the school, the nature of their rival, and the ghosts and creatures that will emerge throughout your years at the school. Each year is represented by a series of card draws, which will represent events that you have to decide how you respond to. If you play this game using the 2-player variant, each of you will play each-other’s rivals, comparing your results to see how the school year affects the both of you. The game culminates in a Final Exam that will determine whether you or or rival comes out on top.

St. Hornbeck, by belsaas.

Welcome to St. Hornbeck College/

Atop a small hill in the woods just outside the small town of Southfield, WI sits a College. Old, copper-rimmed limestone buildings huddle together against the harsh winters, while herds of students wander between them in search of wisdom, kinship and the occasional party. Soon, those herds of students will include you. There are two main reasons for enrolling at St. Hornbeck. Firstly, they have a leading program in the field you want to major in (yes, whatever you may choose). Secondly, there are only a handful of colleges that accept monster-teens in America…

This game relies on traditional teenage tropes to inform your character background, and leans fully into the allegory of monstrosity being a metaphor for young adulthood. Gameplay occurs over a series of scenes, marking various days in the calendar of the school year. In each scene, you can roll for or choose complications related to your monstrosity as a way to invite tension and obstacles for your characters to overcome. If you want to see something that’s a bit darker, you might want to check out this game’s inspiration, by snagging Midnight Oil from Jay Dragon’s Patreon.

Lost Years, by Summerwood Games.

The boarding school in this game is any boarding school, every boarding school. The walls are old stone or red brick, the dormitories are filled with young people going through the agonizing process of becoming themselves, classrooms retrofitted with ceiling tiles and modern lighting.

There are spaces of this school that belong only to us students, sacred rites performed in them that mean nothing to others and everything to us. We smoke cigarettes in the basement, make out in the tack room, make meaningful eye contact across the cricket pitch. I will tell you two truths and a lie: no one can take these years from us, none of us will be the same when we leave, no class will teach us more than we learn from one another. Can you see now which one is the lie? We couldn’t.

Lost Years is a Belonging Outside Belonging game set in a boarding school menaced by a mysterious force that threatens to empty the students of everything that makes them themselves. Meant for 3-5 players, it can be played as a one-shot but is most suited for multi-session play. 

Lost Years looks to be a game that focuses on the emotional highs and lows of being a teenager trying to survive in a strange environment away from the eyes of their parents - but still under the control of some form of authority. Your characters will fill the roles of various tropes from boarding school media, such as the Sporty One, or the Witchy One.

Because this game is BoB, the school itself will fill the foreground, with various locations such as the Attic and the Greenhouse being fleshed out by different players around the table. If you want a game that focuses on the themes of dark academia and how they affect the relationships of these students, you might want to check out Lost Years.

Never & More, by Small Stories.

NEVER & MORE is a quick-play roleplaying game and Edgar Allan Poe-inspired hack of John Harper's Lasers & Feelings.

You are the newest recruits of The Society of Ushers, an occult secret society. Your mission is to prove yourself to your superiors, master the rituals required to move up a rung, and learn how to talk to ravens. Your direct superior and teacher, the Belfry-Devil, has finally deemed you suitable to circulate by yourselves amongst greater society, trusting you to remain faithful to the Ushers in the face of attempted poaching, targeted seduction, and superior parties.

This isn’t necessarily a game about academia, but I think it carries similar elements of learning, dark secrets, and hierarchy. Lasers and Feelings games balance your characters between two qualities; in this case, you are torn between your desire for safety and your hunger for knowledge. You can play this as a one-shot or draw it out if you like, just keep in mind that these types of games usually don’t have resources for character advancement, so your characters won’t gain any new abilities - although whether or not they learn from their mistakes is up to you.

Precarious Prep, by Seaworks.

Welcome to Precarious Prep.

Something dark is going on at Precarious Preparatory School, and one detective - your GM - needs somebody on the inside. In the daytime you'll take classes, get to know the students and faculty, figure out who you can trust. The better you do in class, the faster you'll level up. At night you'll investigate the campus, search for clues, and unlock puzzles. Report your discoveries to the detective to gain points.

Instead of having 6 universal stats, Precarious Prep uses a curriculum - the stats your character takes on are determined by the course load you pick up each trimester. The better you do in classes, the more firepower you’ll have in your investigations. Classes can be fully relevant, partially relevant, or irrelevant to the checks you need to make throughout the game, so coordinate with your team and round out your education with a variety of skills.

Precarious Prep uses something called Discovery Points to indicate how close your students are to revealing what exactly is going on at this preparatory school. Your characters use the things they are learning in class to investigate the mystery, while trying to avoid generating enough suspicion to get them kicked out. Many of the rules strive to generate a number of different gambles that the players can take while trying to gather information - will you do something that increases your chances of success while also increasing your chances of getting expelled? Can you get enough information before the school year ends - or before one of you gets killed?

This game is still in open beta, which means it’s free, but also that it might still have some kinks that need to be worked out. The designer is very eager for feedback, so if you take a look at this game, you might be able to contribute to the final product!

I’d Also Recommend….

The Gardening Club, by Wizard of Ox.

[radiation]

did you play any game(s) recently that you enjoyed? not just wondering about rpg games but i saw the rpg games post and am excited to look at some of the suggestions on that one myself.

I played Content Warning w some of my friends and it was dope. Love to be a funny guy with a T_T face and make funny ass videos not much more to say than that. Played The Midnight Scenes - From The Woods and had a good time with it, its a short horror game and its got the rare quality where like. I felt they somewhat dropped the ball on the story & the horror aspect but the character writing was so incredibly charming that it made up for it.

Also just finished watching my buddy play through Mother 3 and I liked it toooooo although you may be surprised to hear it wasnt quite my thing. Not what was asked but Im gonna expand on some of my thoughts about it here cuz why not

With how unbelievably obsessed I was with Earthbound as a kid, I was hoping Mother 3 would stir up the same kinda love and become an all time favorite game of mine but unfortunately it did not. I think I prefer Earthbound to Mother 3 the same way that I preferred Anodyne 1 to Anodyne 2 where it's like. If you're iterating on a formula in the pursuit of a more cohesive and serious story throughout the entire game, then you have to REALLY commit and REALLY succeed for me to be on board because otherwise I'll nitpick like hell. And I felt like in some ways, for the story Mother 3 was trying to tell, it was a bit noncommittal, with some parts going on for a bit too long, some locations having a bit too little thought put into them, some sections not quite as Committed to the Bit as I'd like them to be or not quite as dark as they could be, some characters lacking just enough development for me to really feel it. All of these things culminating in me lacking immersion in the game's world. I think I'm likely to be a lot more charitable towards games like Earthbound w less of a story focus and more random ass funny ass shit going on even if the gameplay is kinda ass, cuz lighthearted playfulness colors flaws with a certain amount of charm and flavor rather than directly detracting from the experience. Exception to this is I prefer Deltarune to Undertale because Deltarune's writing kicks so much ass that it completely sidesteps all of the issues I tend to have. Anyways Mother 3 is still very very good but Im dat crazy ass narrative / characterization guy so I can be hard to please

[zwei-rhunen]

hi game, what the heck? seriously, what the heck

venting because i'd like to roughly shake the shoulders of whichever game designer is responsible for this >:( i also know with the time i spent venting, i could have already gritted my teeth and just gotten to where-ever it is i'm trying to get to but it's 1. a vent and 2. not the first time this has happened and doing this again has really annoyed me now lol

so like, i need to get from Ala Ghiri to Coldhearth.

"look," you say. "there is a convenient passage right there!"

no, there's not. :)

no, there is not. :))

i google to see if I am just blind, because all i see around me are hills that are too steep for me to climb (I can't fly yet, and this quest is to unlock one of the aether currents.)

the wiki says:

"According to legend, this wind-carved corridor was used by the Destroyer as a sheath for one of his blades. For the local folk, the passage serves as a convenient shortcut when traveling from Coldhearth to Ala Ghiri."

FROM Coldhearth TO Ala Ghiri.

So this is one-way only - which makes sense, looking at the map.

but like.

why though.

Cus right now, it seems like the only way for me as a player to get there is AAAALL THE WAY AROUND? run a SUPER out-of-the-way path that's literally half the map, to get to a point that's within spitting distance?

"it's so you can explore map on foot and take in the sights-"

i've already done that. I did that during the MSQ. there is no need to do it again. I saw all the hills and rocks and Garlean wrecks. They were cool. Please let me continue with the storytelling.

2. "it's for world building purposes-"

Poor excuse- you can have world building without being a detriment to the gameplay to the IRL player.

You dont even have to change anything!! just add a little sparkly spot next to a rock face (JUST like Matoya's Cave) that the player can interact with (after they reach a point in the MSQ, just like earlier in StB when you first arrive at Rhalgr's Reach) that says something like, "you find an illusory entrance that leads into a tunnel/find a secret ladder leading onto the hills, it appears to have been made by the Resistance for ease of travel into the other towns. Cross over?"

3. "chocobo porter?"

none exists in that town :( would be a GREAT idea to implement though!!!!!!!!

(yeah like HEY! porters DO exist, there should be more of them! call them resistance fighter porters or something, if having a permanent one is lore-breaking!! (before freeing it from Garleans - "this seems to be a chocobo porter but the trainer and his bird appear to be away." and then after getting past that point in the MSQ - "hi we're back etc etc port you to places you've been before etc etc")

(Edit: actually this holds great potential for an extra flavor in worldbuilding too. It could be a Garlean-operated porter, and if you try to use it before an MSQ point, it could be used as another narratory glimpse into how the typical footsoldier treats the common civilian. "...why would YOU need to travel? Do you have a permit of leave? Then get back to work, before I report you to your superior."

Or "Authorized Military personnel only, sorry."

Or "stay back! don't even THINK about stealing a bird, savage."

Or "hm? Commoners arent allowed to use the porters... ...it's even worse out there, you know."

OR EVEN for inserting some fun and mild tongue-in-cheek subterfuge: "psst, hey, you're with the Resistance, arent you? Me as well. activity around here has really ramped up, so no one will even notice you on one of our birds ... Our chocobos can etc etc Port you where you've been etc etc"

4. "friend/ask for help/it's an mmo?"

no one is around (else i probably would've /emoted at someone and asked them to do me a quick favor and toss me up there if they had the means), friends are offline b/c i'm a night owl, i could (and have) ask for help in novice network but if it's midnight, i'll be honest - not looking to socialize at that time of the night, esp to ping anyone for something so inconsequential. like sometimes i just want to get my quests done and it's annoying to have to ask someone to drop what they're doing so they can travel all the way to me just to... pick me up and plop me down on a rock-face 5 inches away lol.

5. "just click on the green arrow on the right hand side on the map, that leads to the adjoining area, and if there's an aetheryte nearby you can just teleport to that location and run back into this map, which is still you travelling on foot but it dramatically shortens your travel."

I usually did this for places in Heavensward and I'm sad to say that this doesn't work here, bc that's a location (Porta Praetoria) I haven't unlocked yet. :') WHICH SUCKS BC THE AETHERYTE IS RIGHT THEREEEEE

I COULD JUST-

AND THEN JUST-

but noooo. i gotta run all the way around LIKE-

?????????????????

i really enjoy this game. and i want to love this game, but pleaseeee

its so tiring and irritating watching my poor little meow-meow taking the most dumbass ways around to get to places that shouldn't be an issue this late into an expansion LMFAO - like, i am 6 quests away from end of Stormblood MSQ.

I promise squenix, adding some conveniences won't break the lore/world-building/diminish the value of character exploration.

pleaseeeee.

[utopianadaosophy]

Imagine a blend of Scrabble and taco night—a fiesta of letters and toppings! Let’s create the Scrabble Taco Board and savor every wordy bite:

Ingredients:

Tortilla Tiles:

Our game board consists of tortillas—soft, circular tiles.

Each tortilla represents a cell where letters will be placed.

Salsa Alphabet:

Instead of traditional letter tiles, we have a salsa alphabet:

Avocado, Beans, Cilantro, Diced tomatoes, etc.

Each salsa ingredient has a point value (based on tastiness, of course).

Gameplay:

Taco Word Formation:

Players take turns placing salsa ingredients on the tortilla tiles.

Form words horizontally or vertically, just like in Scrabble.

Taco Toppings and Points:

Each salsa ingredient has a point value:

Avocado: 1 point (smooth and buttery).

Cilantro: 2 points (fresh and zesty).

Jalapeño: 3 points (spicy kick).

Sour Cream: 4 points (cool and creamy).

Chorizo: 5 points (bold and savory).

Bonus Salsas:

Certain tortilla tiles have bonus salsas:

Double Guacamole: Doubles the value of the ingredient placed.

Triple Pico de Gallo: Triples the ingredient’s points.

Taco Challenges:

Encounter taco challenges during play:

“Create a 7-letter word using only green ingredients!”

“Form a palindrome with salsa names!”

Safety Rules:

Guac Overboard Alert:

Avoid flinging guacamole into the air.

It’s messy and might hit seagulls.

Taco Paddle Etiquette:

Use your taco paddle (mini spatula) to place ingredients.

No hands—keep them salsa-free!

Wordy Navigation:

Use words to guide your taco route:

“Salsa left at ‘Sour Cream’!”

“Straight toward ‘Chorizo’!”

Winning the Taco Fiesta:

Taco Points:

Accumulate points throughout the meal.

Highest score wins the flavor-packed feast.

Nature’s Applause:

The taco board vibrates with joy:

Tortillas ripple.

Salsas harmonize.

Variations:

Midnight Taco Scrabble:

Play under moonlight.

Spell words by starlit salsa.

Team Tacos:

Taco relay races:

Pass ingredients to teammates mid-bite.

Create a continuous flavor chain.

Remember:

No Salsa Splash Zone.

Exchange Ingredients with Gusto.

Embrace the Crunch of Words.

[twinsimming]

Pasteurize Milk Mod by Twinsimming 🐄

I was heavily inspired by the cows from The Sims 4: Cottage Living and wanted to flesh out the Milkin’ It Dairy Corral cows from The Sims 3 Store to provide more gameplay options.

Requirements

This is a script mod that requires CCLoader and the Milkin’ It Dairy Corral from The Sims 3 Store to function properly. If you want to create all of the flavors of milk available in this mod, the following packs/store content/mods are required:

The Sims 3: Late Night

The Sims 3: Showtime

The Sims 3: Supernatural

The Sims 3: Seasons

The Sims 3: University Life

Bohemian Fruits and Nuts from The Sims 3 Store or Strawberry Plant - v1.2 by douglasveiga

Interactions

Pasteurize: A new inventory interaction added to the Milkin’ It Dairy Corral milk bottles that allows you to turn the three existing milk types (regular milk, chocolate milk, and soy milk) into milks that actually sell for simoleons!

Each type of milk sells for a different price, and the selling price increases the higher the quality of the milk is. Sims can also drink the milk and each milk flavor has their own moodlet!

Pasteurized Milk (Got Milk?)** §10

Pasteurized Chocolate Milk (Chocolate Chuckles) §15

Pasteurized Soy Milk (Plant Power)** §20

**= custom moodlet

The quality of the milk also affects its moodlets.

Normal quality milks will give a +10 or +15 moodlet

Nice quality or higher will give a +20 or +25 moodlet

Bad quality or worse milks will give your sim a custom negative Spoiled Milk moodlet of -10 or -15, as well as a -10 Nauseous moodlet, so they'll throw up after a period of time.

Add Flavor: A new inventory interaction added to the Milkin’ It Dairy Corral milk bottles to combine certain harvestables and regular milk to create several different types of flavored milk. These milks are also drinkable and give the following moodlets:

New Flavors:

Strawberry Milk = Regular Milk + Strawberry (Social Strawberry) §30

Fire Milk = Regular Milk + Ghost Chili (Spicy) §60

Golden Honey Milk = Regular Milk + Honey (Life is Sweet) §50

Pumpkin Spice Milk = Regular Milk + Pumpkin + Cinnamon (Cinnamon) §75

Obsidian Milk = Regular Milk + Midnight Bean (Midnight Buzz) §45

Rainbow Milk = Regular Milk + Wonderpetal (Blizzard) §50

Banana Milk = Regular Milk + Banana (Bananah) §20

The quality of harvestables must be Nice or better to add to regular milk. Flavoring milk will always result in Nice or higher quality milk and will match the quality of the harvestable used.

The selling price will always be higher than selling the harvestables by themselves.

The moodlets given are also a bit stronger than if your sim gained them through other means.

Drinking any flavor of milk will remove the negative Too Spicy moodlet if you have The Sims 3: Supernatural installed. It also hydrates Plant Sims and Mermaids.

All flavors of milk can be purchased at the grocery store and will be Normal quality.

Turn Milk Into Butter: Requires two Milkin’ It Dairy Corral milk bottles and produces a new Butter ingredient. Butter can also be purchased at the grocery store for §5.

Turn Soy Milk Into Tofu: Requires two Milkin’ It Dairy Corral soy milk bottles and produces a Tofu ingredient.

New Moodlets

Got Milk?: Given when sims drink Pasteurized Milk, lasts 3 hours, +20 mood

Plant Power: Given when sims Pasteurized Soy Milk, lasts 3 hours, +20 mood

Spoiled Milk: Given when sims drink Bad or worse quality milk, lasts 3 hours, -20 mood

Cooking Overhauls

I created this mod with Cooking Overhaul mods in mind, to add things like Pasteurized Milk and Butter into existing recipes, but they are not required to use this mod.

For those who do have a Cooking Overhaul mod installed follow the instructions in the text file titled "For Cooking Overhauls" to enable Pasteurized Milk and Butter to be used in recipes.

Personally, I added Butter to the Grilled Cheese, Cookies, and Lobster Thermidor recipes.

Conflicts & Known Issues

- This is a new script mod, so there shouldn’t be any conflicts.

- The qualities of the milks will revert to Normal if you travel to other worlds with them in your inventory. This seems to be an issue with all non-harvestable ingredients, so I don’t know if this is something that can be fixed.

Credits

EA/Maxis for The Sims 3 and The Sims 4, Visual Studio 2019, ILSpy, SmoothJazz, Notepad+++, CCLoader, Blender, s3pe, TSRW, Sims4Studio, Milkshape, and Gimp.

Default cow texture is by aminovas here!

Thank You

To @greenplumbboblover, Battery,  @zoeoe-sims, and TheSweetSimmer for helping me with the code and prop animations. This mod would never have gotten this far without you all.

To @puddingface1902 for your custom moodlet templates.

To @flotheory for your wonderful animation converting tutorial.

To douglasveiga for the amazing CCLoader tool.

And to @puffkins2000​, @phoebejaysims, @misspats3​, @bietjie​, @simsdeogloria​, and SonyaYU for testing the mod and providing invaluable feedback!

Download @ ModTheSims

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Cards to Spells

This is gonna be a long post on how I turn Magic: The Gathering cards into pop culture magic spells, so sit down, get some water, and prepare to deal with a lot. If you're not interested in this post, press "J" on your keyboard and it'll take you to the next post. If you're on mobile, sucks to be you. I will not be tucking this under a "read more" on my blog because I don't want it to be completely lost if the post or my blog is deleted in the future.

This post is part of my ever-growing MTG pop culture series. Remember to check out the MTG wiki to get familiar with the Colors and the lore. Take what resonates and works for your practice.

Big thanks and appreciation to my buddy @kaosmage, sole proprietor of the @strixhaven-biblioplex, another MTG mage who is helping me carry this niche ass magical practice. Thanks, Faust, my dear brother in magic.

My other two bits of frantic thanking go to Rabbit of @will-o-the-witch and @jumblr-protector-golem fame and to Bree of @breelandwalker and published author fame. Their stuff really helped me in the Planeswalker section.

Please note: While the in-game term is "mana", I use the term "energy" in my magical practice.

Selecting Your Card

For the purposes of this post, I challenged my follower discord server to give me colors for each primary card type: Artifact, Creature (I asked for two, actually), Enchantment, Instant, Land, Planeswalker, and Sorcery. I then took these and headed to Scryfall, one of the most complete MTG card searches available to me, to select cards from three of the four most recent sets (Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and Streets of New Capenna).

As a personal flex, I mostly utilize Common and Uncommon cards, especially those usually overlooked in my collection because of their...unfortunately sub-par gameplay in our house rules. You aren't restricted in any card you might use as the basis for a spell or working.

There are two exceptions to the rarity and set rules I put in place, but that's because I was given a challenge mode for my planeswalker card and my land card.

Artifact: Hedgewitch's Mask (Innistrad: Midnight Hunt)

Image description begin: A digital scan of the "Hedgewitch's Mask" card from Magic: The Gathering. It is an Artifact: Equipment card for 1 White mana. It gives the equipped creature plus one power and plus one toughness. It makes it so the equipped creature can't be blocked by other creatures that have power four or greater. It costs two of any mana to equip. The flavor text reads "In Kessig, even celebration wears a fearsome face." It depicts a young human witch wearing a bone mask with antlers and twigs on her face. The twigs bear many small orange candles that are burning brightly. She stands among orange leaves as part of the Harvesttide celebrations. End image description.

My challenge for this card's development was for a White card. Originally I was going to use the Lion Sash from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, however that's a Rare card and I'm sticking to mostly Commons and Uncommons. (The Lion's Sash would make a great protection enchantment for a scarf or headscarf of any sort.)

After studying this card and musing over the concept of a protection tool, I will be deciding to create a protection enchantment to go on a face mask, because we are STILL in a fucking pandemic and it's only gotten worse in my local area. Faust also recommended that it could boost confidence and intimidation for those seeking to fight injustice. Both of these things - seeking justice and protection - fall neatly into White's philosophy, so we're all set to keep going!

Our next step is to gather our tools. For this spell, I would use the Hedgewitch's Mask card itself, my enchanting board (which I've talked about before in this series), a facemask (likely a white one), a White-aligned crystal associated with protection (for energy; I would likely use snow quartz, selenite, or moonstone), a chant or sigil meaning "protect me while I fight for justice", and possibly a marker if I would go the sigil route.

If you don't feel connected to crystals, you can draw on your own energy if you find yourself aligned with White energy or you can figure out what plants, locations, or other tools are White-aligned. Common alternatives may include casting the spell on a plain or small hill, using air- or earth-aligned things, or using foods like rice or rosemary.

Regardless, we only need one White source, so we're ready to go! I would place the energy source on the board, then put the mask and card down below it. Then I would channel energy from the source to the mask, repeating the chant (if that's my route). After that, if I wanted to do more, I would draw the sigil on the corner of the face mask, away from where I would be breathing it directly.

And with all that said and done, then you have an artifact of your own - a facemask for protection and to help you stand against injustice.

This casting pattern is one of my default go-to's when I need to cast an MTG spell - enchanting board, energy sources, energy moving, chant. I've generally found that telling the energy what it's supposed to do works very well in my magic.

Creature (Servitor/Thoughtform): Mage's Attendant (Streets of New Capenna)

Image description begin: A low-quality digital scan of the "Mage's Attendant" card from Magic: The Gathering. It is a Creature: Cat Rogue card for two generic mana and one White mana. It has a power of three and a toughness of two. When it enters the battlefield, the caster creates a Blue Creature: Wizard token with one power, one toughness, and the ability to pay one mana and sacrifice the Wizard to counter a non-creature spell unless the caster pays one mana themself. The flavor text of the card reads "Crime sometimes makes unlikely allies into lifelong friends." The image depicts a cat humanoid woman in an expensive-looking red jacket and white pants with a sword resting on her shoulder. Behind her is an archway with people coming down to join her. The closest one is likely the Wizard. End image description.

As someone who loves creating thoughtforms and servitors, I figured I would share my approach to that when I do one based off of a card. As I call myself a Wizard, this card makes perfect sense to me as a protection servitor.

Now, the difference between a servitor and a thoughtform as I understand it is sentience. A thoughtform may have a mind of their own, with their own thoughts and feelings, but a servitor may not. So what we're doing here is getting two servitors for the price of one - one that will go down first, and then the second to continue to protect as the first one goes down.

So for this one, I would opt for a White energy source associated with protection (again, snow quartz is usually my go-to), a Blue energy source associated with protection (which would be my beloved sodalite; this one is for the bonus Wizard), and a third energy source of any color. It could be my own energy (I associate myself most with Blue, Black, and Red energy in my magical workings) or it could be another source with a color I want to draw in - another White source to double down on the protection, a Blue source to help boost the Wizard, a Black source for a ruthless streak, a Red source for more power, or a Green source to double down on the community aspect of having several servitors in place for one job.

The first thing I do is design the activation and dismissal phrase, usually along the lines of the flavor text of the card. Since these two are tied together, I would give them the same phrases: "Unlikely allies, I call you for aid." for activation and "Lifelong friends, thank you for your help." for dismissal. I would give them their job in no uncertain terms and close any loopholes I could find with the wording that would make it backfire.

Since I'm not actually casting this, I won't go through the whole process of me dramatically laying across the table like an exhausted lawyer while between one and nine deities just watch in the background. But closing all of the loopholes can get so, so tiring.

Following that, I would then decide what things help them gain power. Repeated use? Leaving the card in the sunlight or moonlight? There are many, many methods available.

Finally, I would pump as much energy into the creation of the servitors as possible, bringing them into being.

Creature (Spell): Forge Boss (Streets of New Capenna)

Image description begin: A low-quality digital scan of the "Forge Boss" card from Magic: The Gathering. He is a Creature: Human Warrior for two generic mana, one Black mana, and one Red mana. He has a power of three and a toughness of four. Whenever you sacrifice one or more other creatures, he deals two damage to each opponent, but this ability only triggers once per turn. The flavor text is a quote that reads "Big furnace like this can reduce anything to ash. You got something you need reduced to ash?" He is a well-beareded man with a partially-shaven head and he's ominously holding a shovel as though he intends to use it as a weapon. He is dressed in a very dapper manner with a white button-up shirt, black trousers, a striped vest, and leather work gloves. End image description.

Yeah I used a multicolored card instead of a monoRed one. Sue me (please don't actually, I'm small and don't have much money but I WILL cry and that's a threat).

Anyway, I've decided that this card is perfect for a banishing where you've tried everything else you possibly could and none of it seems to be working fast enough. This is the full "make an effigy, burn it, scatter the ashes, SHIT UPON THE ASHES" song and dance.

So how are we gonna do this? Well, I happen to be the lucky type that lives in a house with a functioning wood stove, and also I'm a pyromaniac (you may be surprised to hear that many firefighters are). I also happen to have index cards. With that in mind, look at that, we have a Colorless source (the taglock, the future human-shaped index card), a Red source (fire), and a Black source (seething hatred). We could round the fourth one out with your own energy (provided that you're more energetic when you're pissed, like me) or through the invocation of another entity on your side (while religion and angels are typically White-aligned, demons Black-aligned, and fae Blue-aligned, individual entities may vary; always talk to them first and figure out if they even want to be involved with casting this spell).

The most important component of a spell like this is fire safety, so make sure you have a proper class fire extinguisher (the NFPA recommends at least a class A extinguisher for wood and paper), fire-resistant gloves, and other tools for working with a wood stove or other fire source.

Doodle your little human figure on the index card. Write as much information about the target as you possibly can manage.

Now, using tongs or fire-resistant gloves, pick up that index card and light that fucker up! Set it down safely in the wood stove and chant or repeatedly think something to the effect of "I am the Forge Boss. Fuck outta my life. Eat shit and die. Leave me the fuck alone. Go fuck yourself."

Watch it burn, and just let the energy leave to fuck up the person's life until they leave yours.

This is great on a psychological level as well, because by burning something representing the person you want to get rid of, it helps you release your anger and channel it into something destructive that doesn't involve physically hurting yourself or anyone/anything you care about. It's great for relief is what I'm saying.

Enchantment: Witness Protection (Streets of New Capenna)

Image description begin: A low-quality digital scan of the "Witness Protection" card from Magic: The Gathering. It's an Enchantment: Aura card for one Blue mana that enchants a creature. Enchanted creature loses all abilities and is a Green and White Creature: Citizen with base power one and base toughness one named Legitimate Businessperson. The enchanted creature loses all other colors, card types, creature types, and names. The image shows a cephalid, which is a squid person not unlike Cthulhu, with various white magical masks floating around their face. They're turned to the right, looking down at their hat and cane. The crowd around them is going to the left, none the wiser to the cephalid's machinations. End image description.

Can you tell that SNC has a chokehold on me? That was a rhetorical question.

Looking at this card, the first thing that came to mind for me was a personal ward that makes you an energy vampire. This would be an offensive protection, draining others to reinvigorate you. Yep, we're going the baneful magic route.

So what we're looking for are Blue energy sources that can be used for baneful and beneficial magic. And lucky for us, there are two that stick right out to me: blueberry thorns and amethyst.

There have been way too many spells in these examples that require speaking, so let's switch it up and make this a nonverbal enchantment. We're gonna sit down with our tool in question (if you're using blueberry thorns, you may want to seal them in a small jar with a corkscrew lid instead of unleashing them in your pockets; they're easier to clean up and move that way) and focus on them. Focus on how they're going to help us draw energy from around us into ourselves to keep us going through the day. Once the energy has felt properly spun around and around (or whatever a properly enchanted item feels like to you, if you feel energy) or you're just tired of sitting, put your little energy straw into your pocket and go about your day.

Naturally, this will draw ANY energy into you. The rancid vibes of your shitty boss. The weird backrooms of your work where three people have gone missing. Your creepy coworker. But hey, we're here to make an energy vampire enchantment, not to actually cast it. We're just here to see how I'd make the card work.

Instant: Season of Renewal (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty)

Image description begin: A digital scan of the "Season of Renewal" card from Magic: The Gathering. It's an Instant card for two generic mana and one Green mana. You can choose one of two effects. The first returns a creature card from your graveyard to your hand. The second returns an enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand. The flavor text reads "Pavement ripped like paper as the ancient kami awoke from her long slumber beneath the city." It depicts a spirits that looks like a human woman, if not for the repeating faces going down her chest and turning into what appears to be a centipede-like body. She is unburying herself from concrete and reaching up to hold large bird-like entities that have come to join her. End image description.

The image is a little freaky of this card, not gonna lie, but that's kind of the point of the kami in Kamigawa.

Faust and I went back and forth over this card for a good ten minutes before we finally settled on a spell for reconnecting to one's roots. The thing is, the two abilities of this card? Very anti-Green. The returning an enchantment thing is very Blue, which is one of Green's enemies, while the returning a creature thing is Black, which is Green's other enemy. We tossed several ideas, like an infinite magical feedback loop or a spell to reconnect with nature in the city (which I am very not qualified to write as a wizard in bumfuck nowhere), back and forth until I settled on the reconnecting one.

And if you ask me, the first thing that comes to mind as an energy source for this is rosemary, which has often been used in rememberance and memory spells. It's Green-aligned by virtue of being a plant, but also brings in a note of White, useful for nostalgia.

Faust then pitched to me the idea of something mossy, leading to me frantically typing moss agate in all caps in our Direct Messages, because I love me some rocks. But you could also use literal, actual moss if you happen to have that. I don't know if people just fucking...collect moss, but I live in fear of the thought. Moss and moss agate would both also be Green-aligned.

Okay, point being, we now have two Green sources (though one is Green-White) out of the way. So now we need the third source, which is going to be another fucking taglock! This is going to be one for you, something that helps one connect with their roots; whether that's the roots of their craft, their childhood, their land, or their ancestors.

So if I were casting this, my next step would be to channel energy from the rosemary and moss agate/actual moss to the taglock. Then, I would keep the taglock around me while I researched or thought deeply about my roots. (I'm not gonna say meditate because I am in the anti-meditation squad on account of "that doesn't work worth a shit to me".) This spell would basically become a focuser for me - it would give me something to focus on when I have too much energy and need to spend it somehow.

Where instants differ from sorceries is that instants are "cast ahead, activate later" while sorceries are "sit down and do the whole spell in one place". Instant spells I make will often serve like activated enchantments, while my sorceries tend to lean heavier on things like divination.

Land: Gingerbread Cabin (Throne of Eldraine)

Image description begin: A slightly grainy digital scan of the "Gingerbread Cabin" card from Magic: The Gathering. It's a Land: Forest card that you can tap to add one Green mana to your mana pool. It enters the battlefield tapped unless you control three or more other Forests. When it enters untapped, you create a Food token. A Food token is an Artifact token where you can pay two generic mana, tap it, and sacrifice it in order to gain three life. The image shows a candy house made mostly of gingerbread and lit up in a few places by lanterns. It's held up in a forest with huge trees by some roots that create a platform for it. More candy serves as mushrooms and foliage around the cabin itself. End image description.

Lands are a little trickier to design spells for. In my practice, they're mostly used for storing energy. But because this is a non-Basic Land (it's not named Forest and it doesn't have the Basic supertype), we have a little more play and give.

And I dunno about y'all, but a gingerbread house in the woods makes me think of making food tastier. Home cooking (hopefully without an evil witch trying to eat children) and happiness around the hearth. Food-based magic and the act of cooking itself are both already Green-aligned, so we're in business to jump in!

What we're looking for here is a small chant or thing to repeat in one's head, like "As I turn this house into a home, I cook blessings into this food." Something to help you get in the mindset of making the food more pleasant, something you can build up over time in the same kitchen, something short and to the point.

And, well, my theory is that the more you cast a spell or say a chant the same way, the more it'll stick and the less it'll take out of you because it's already built up. Like laying down bricks for a basement.

Planeswalker: Karn Liberated (New Phyrexia)

Image description begin: A slightly grainy digital scan of the "Karn Liberated" card from Magic: The Gathering. He is a Legendary Planeswalker: Karn card for seven generic mana. He starts with six loyalty counters. His plus four loyalty counter ability is that target player exiles a card from their hand. His minus three loyalty counter ability is that he exiles target permanent. His minus fourteen loyalty counter ability is to restart the game, leaving all non-Enchantment: Aura permanents exiled. Then Karn's controller puts those cards onto the battlefield under their control. Karn is a large metal humanoid that looks to be in very rough shape. His metal is dull and covered in bumps. He's non-gendered but prefers he/him pronouns for convenience. End image description.

Okay, firstly, FUCKING HELL. All of the Colorless planeswalker cards at this point (three Karns and two Ugins) are rare or mythical, so no actual card to work with here because I ain't shilling out twenty-four to sixty-eight United States dollars for a card I'll only use for magic instead of play, no thank you!

Secondly, let's address the golem thing. On account of video games not understanding that golems come from Jewish folklore and religious history, they tend to just use the word "golem" for any metallic humanoid. You're lucky if they maintain the protective connotations of the word. So despite Golem being a Creature type and Karn being a Golem in canon, I just refer to them as Constructs (which is another Creature type so I don't understand why it's so fucking hard to not be a dick). Rabbit, a most lovely Jewish witch in my circle of the Internet, recommended this article from My Jewish Learning if you're interested in learning more about golems.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's address Karn himself. And yeah, he uses he/him pronouns, mostly for convenience, so we're gonna honor that. Anyway, this card is from after he got away from the Phyrexians and got back to his right mind. While it wasn't an abuse situation (try mind control and evil oil), this card could be a basis for a spell to aid in escape from such a situation.

On account of Karn not getting away on his own (it took at least one planeswalker's self-sacrifice, rest in peace Venser), this spell would likely be for helping someone else escape an abusive situation and calling for outside aid. We've got seven energy points we need to fill up, so let's get to work!

Let's crack open some other folks' spells for inspiration. Bree has two interesting ones of note in her book "The Sisters Grimmoire volume 1": The Bear (from Snow-White and Rose-Red) and The Glass Coffin (from the fairy tale of the same name). The Bear is for protecting yourself from harm and abuse and calls for a small cloth bag, a bear figurine, and five different herbs. The Glass Coffin is to bring opportunities for escape or rescue to someone trapped in a bad situation and calls for a red apple, a bucket or pitcher of water, an empty bucket, and whole cloves.

There's a note that Bree wrote in The Glass Coffin spell that I want to reiterate:

It must also be said that practical advice and emotional support do just as much, if not more, for people in difficult situations than spells do. Help them however you can without putting either of you in danger. ~Bree NicGarran, The Sisters Grimmoire volume 1

So now we've got an idea of where spells like this tend to go. I'm thinking of a aiding prayer, something to open up opportunities, and protection out the wazoo. Since any color of energy can be used in this spell, we're not limited by that.

Let's see, I have a few correspondences written in my grimoires from my own research. Basil is easy to get a hold of and is used for moving forward, opportunity, and protection and is aligned with Green. Oregano is protective and boosts or enhances spells and is also Green-aligned. Your energy can account for any color or even Colorless itself. A prayer to another entity for aid will line up with the color or colors most closely related to that entity.

But that still only leaves us with four of the seven energy sources we need. And no matter how much energy you personally pump into it, you're still only going to count as one energy source in a spell like this. So I recommend making the last three energy sources into individual taglocks that will double as your spell focus. The more closely related these are to the person you're opening up opportunities to, the better.

And I'm predictable, so I would be using my enchanting board to help direct the energy to the taglocks. As I direct energy, I like to have a chant or order I repeat, so I might go "escape, be safe, escape, be safe" over and over again.

My prayer may read something like "Lady Athena, protector of the city, please help [insert friend name] get out of their abusive situation without bringing them to harm" or "Lord Apollo and Lady Artemis, protector of children, please help [insert child name] remain safe in their abusive household and guide them to ways of escape". It will inevitably vary based on who I'm asking and what I'm asking for.

Overall, this would be a very energy-intensive spell and would require a lot of moving parts.

Sorcery: Winterthorn Blessing (Innistrad: Midnight Hunt)

Image description begin: A digital scan of the "Winterthorn Blessing" card from Magic: The Gathering. It's a Sorcery for one Green mana and one Blue mana with the Flashback cost of one generic mana, one Green mana, and one Blue mana. It puts a plus one power and plus one toughness counter on up to one target creature you control. Then you tap up to one target creature you don't control, which doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. Flashback means that you can cast the spell from your graveyard for a little more mana, then you exile the card. The picture shows several spirits inhabiting a tree-like creature with a deer skull and antlers on top. They are wandering through the trees together.

As I said up in the instant section, what separates an instant from a sorcery in my practice is that instants have a spell, and then an activation later, while sorceries are spells that you sit down and do all at once.

And yes, I did opt for a multicolored card instead of a monoBlue one, deal with it. We're doing a strength spell for this one! Not pictured is me sending a picture of this card to my buddy Faust yelling "What the fuck do I do about the flashback cost?"

So, strength spell. Green is great about strength, especially communal strength. And Blue is here for...some reason, this honestly does not feel like Blue's wheelhouse. Counters are usually a White thing, and instants and sorceries are spread across all of the colors. Anyway, let's just move on.

There aren't many things I'd associate with Blue that can cover strength - Green's got plants out the wazoo for it (basil, cinnamon, oregano, parsley, sweet pea) but Blue ain't got jack diddly dip squat shit. What Blue DOES have, however, is tea. That's right, we've got a tea spell! You thought I was just gonna use the enchanting board this whole time, didn't you? Well, uh...you're mostly right, bUT STILL-

Anyway, if you've been here a hot minute, you may remember the Tea Discourse that started because I admitted that I microwave the water for my tea. I'm sorry to tell you all that I have since gotten a kettle yet haven't drank anything but water and milk since then.

What we're gonna want is a tea that tastes good when you add cinnamon to it, because I am unhinged and cannot be stopped. My go-to tea of choice is honey vanilla chamomile herbal tea because black teas launch me into orbit and my resting heartbeat already registers as a heart attack.

So what we've got here is the base tea for Blue and then the cinnamon for Green (and also Red, which is also good for strength), so now we just make up that tea and focus on strengthening ourselves.

But wait, what about that Flashback cost? After all, the graveyard is where things go after they're done for.

Well, if you make your tea in a tea bag, you now have a strength-focused used bag of tea that you can use in another magical working. If you don't drink all of the liquid, I guess you can save some of the tea for later strength magic? I dunno man, it fucked me up to think about reusing tea.

In Conclusion

What have we learned here today? Well, a few things:

The way I break down spells is complicated and will give you a headache if you try to follow my exact methods because even I don't know what I'm doing.

I will shamelessly shill for other people's books. I am once again reminding you to go get The Sisters Grimmoire volume 1 from Bree's shop and keep your eye out for when volume 2 drops.

Colors go brrr.

Working on pumping out eight spells across two days will give you a migraine like you wouldn't believe, and I didn't even technically finish writing these spells! These are just notes and ideas, most of 'em aren't complete!

Streets of New Capenna went off on the 1920's aesthetic, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty went off on the cyberpunk aesthetic, and the two Innistrad sets went off on the spooky aesthetic.

Karn deserved better.

[markrosewater]

Mark, I love Coven! I love the gameplay, I love the flavor, and I love the way it makes you think multiple turns ahead. As a huge fan of drafting green/white, can you deliver some high fives to the design teams top to bottom who made the color pair feel so interesting in Midnight Hunt, but also so true to the GW identity?

Will do!

[inventors-fair]

Chromalevolent

I’ve been drafting a lot of Midnight Hunt. A lot.

And look, I’m a softie for Innistrad as a plane. I love the grotesqueries. I love the mechanical complexity. I love the weirdness and power level. I even enjoy the way that it impacts formats and leans into the color tropes even more than something like Ravnica. It feels much more organic, like these are parts of a whole world rather than factions. Playing with Innistrad-based sets makes for such good gameplay experiences, even when I get stomped.

Now, I remember a week or two ago where MaRo mentioned that Innistrad was one of the first sets with “signpost uncommons” if not the first. I wouldn’t ask you guys to do that again, because in retrospect that is a monumentally difficult task and the first time I did it I liked it a lot but it wasn’t easy. So, what else is there to do? Is this a flavor contest? Oh yeah. Is this a mechanical contest? Oh yeah.

Design a card from the world of Innistrad that is multicolor and/or leans into the multicolor themes of the world.

Printed examples include:

Travel Preparations

Deadly Allure

Desolate Lighthouse

Arlinn Kord

Ride Down

Devoted Grafkeeper

M.E.O.W.

~ Mandatory! The card must have a multicolor feel. The most technical version of accomplishing that is with a multicolor cost and/or two different mana symbols appearing in the card’s rules text. But take the least “gotcha” possible approach to this, because you’re also making a resonant card that’s themed around the world of Innistrad. Must be multicolor, must be Innistrad.

~ Encouraged! I’m interested in either the scary or the resonant. I’m kinda grimdark at times! I like the funny, weird, silly part of Innistrad where hatmakers wrangle zombies, where shepherds are miffed over lost sheep not knowing that a demon reached from behind and ate it with hardly a bleat. Innistrad can be complex, and powerful, and filled with tropes.

~ Optional! Is there a character or situation that you’ve wanted to see more of? Do you have leanings towards legends and ways to make them work in EDH? Is there a horror trope that scares you or that you like using to scare others? Let’s get creepy and crawly. Really lean into making a card that feels at home on an utterly hostile world that at the same time feels like home to the brave and weird.

~ Warning! Innistrad is not a world that is naturally conducive to three-color multicolor weirdness. We’ve been pretty established here, and that’s that. This contest is not about exploring a potential future of how Innistrad could or should be changed, but a celebration of the world and mood. If you make a multicolor tDFC, keep in mind that the costs have to be reflective of color restrictions; a card of one color should not break when transformed into another. Bends are acceptable.

** PLEASE DO NOT USE RECENTLY SPOILED MECHANICS FROM INNISTRAD: CRIMSON VOW. THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE CONTEST. **

You are designing a card for a standard/draftable environment.

DFCs are absolutely allowed.

Halloween? Over? Never. Look, things just aligned this way, and I’m the only one who has a love of the giggling murderous side of this place. And what does that mean? Absolutely nothing! Now turn around, close your eyes, and tell me if the rust on this knife irritates your liver. Don’t worry. Don’t worry at all.

- @abelzumi

>> Spooky scary SuBmIsSiOnS! >> Dark, defiled DiScOrD!

[loreholdlesbian]

Midnight Hunt Draft Booster Challenge

Every set, I like to make a booster pack of custom cards that could be in the set. This is based on a challenge from GDS3, so it has a few constraints like requiring at least one common of every color and wanting you to be able to innovate on what's in the set. While I try to be innovative, though, I settle for functional because coming up with 15 innovative cards, 2/3s of which are commons is hard, man. It's been a bit since Midnight Hunt, because I enjoy procrastinating and making my life difficult.

Here’s the link to my reddit post for it

Here's the link to the full booster and now I'll delve into card by card stories.

Commons:

Dawnhart Ritualist 1W

Creature- Human Warlock [c]

1W: If Dawnhart Ritualist has the same power as another creature you control, put a +1/+1 counter on it. Activate only as a sorcery.

2/2

This is meant to be a coven enabler. It has the same power as another one of your creatures? Just pump it until it doesn't. I actually liked this mechanic enough that I turned it into a keyword action on a few custom cards (called train).

Holy Prayer 2W

Instant [c]

Exile target opponent’s graveyard. You gain 1 life for each creature card exiled this way.

Draw a card.

I'll be honest, I was struggling to find the last white common i needed. I'm pretty happy with the result though. It's a solid graveyard hate card for limited that can gain you a bit of life. Nothing special, I'll admit, but a solid functional card.

Geist's Guidance 1U

Instant [c]

Draw a card. If you cast a spell from a graveyard this turn, instead scry 2 then draw a card.

Flashback 2UU

Here's a type of design I always enjoy using with alternate cost mechanics. This works as both an enabler and a payoff for the cast-spells-from-graveyard theme in blue white. I always enjoy designs like this, where they conditionally get an upgrade and have an alternate cost that means you'll always meet that condition.

Brutal Famine 2B

Sorcery [c]

Target creature's controller sacrifices it unless they exile two creature cards from their graveyard.

Flashback 2B

I wanted to really show off the darkside of Innistrad, and cannibalism is always a strong way to do that. And I think this capture's that flavor really well. I like the play style of this, because sometimes you'll be able to get two creatures which is very strong, and sometimes what happens is you make them use up their resources saving the creature so that the second time around they don't have the cards in their graveyard. I think it makes for really interesting gameplay.

Festering Wound 1B

Enchantment - Aura [c]

Enchant creature

Enchanted creature gets -2/-2.

When enchanted creature dies, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token with decayed.

I wanted to get a decayed design in here cause it's a cool mechanic, and while this isn't the most clever mechanically I like it as a top down design.

Devilish Grin R

Enchantment - Aura [c]

Enchant creature.

Enchanted creature gets +1/+1

When enchanted creature dies, it deals 1 damage to any target.

As soon as I realized this name hadn't been used, I knew exactly what this card should do. This never once changed.

Village Outcast 3G

Creature- Human Werewolf Warrior [c]

~ can't be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less.

Daybound

Village Terror

[g] Creature- Werewolf [c]

Wolves and Werewolves you control can't be blocked by creatures with power 2 or less.

Nightbound

I wanted to do something a bit cleverer with the pack's werewolf, but my disturb designs felt better for the upper rarities than what i came up with for the werewolf so it was stuck at common. I also wanted at least one tribal reward in the pack, and combining these ended up with the design i was happiest with.

Thing in the Woods 2G

Creature - Elk Horror [c]

Sacrifice a creature or pay 1G: ~ gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate only once each turn.

2/2

Here's a card I absolutely love both mechanically and flavorfully. "Fucked up deer" is one of my favorite horror tropes, and I think this design threads the needle between "innovative" and "simple/functional" that it needs to be at common more than any other design here.

In the Face of Darkness 2G

Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.

Coven — If you control three or more creatures with different power, choose up to one target creature. Each creature you control deals damage equal to its power to up to the chosen creature.

I wanted at least coven payoff in the set, and i think this one works really well. I think a combination of a fog and removal spell is fun together, and I love the flavor it ended up with.

Haunted Statue 4

Artifact Creature - Statue [c]

If it’s neither day nor night, it becomes day as Haunted Statue enters the battlefield.

Defender

As long as it’s night, Haunted Statue can attack as though it didn’t have defender.

With day/night as a mechanic, I wanted to lean into some tropes related to it. And I love the trope of statues that come alive at night, so here's an attempt at recreating that.

Uncommons

Oncoming Twilight 1U

Sorcery [u]

If it's day, untap all creatures you control. If it's night, creatures don't untap during each opponent's next untap step. If it's neither day nor night, it becomes day.

Flashback 2U

Alright so fun story here! A couple years ago I began working on a custom Lorwyn/Shadowmoor type set. And I made a mechanic called day/night based on the werewolf mechanic from innistrad sets that was very similar to the one made for midnight hunt. The difference was it was always either day or night depending on the number of spells cast. Like, cards didn't need the "if it's neither day nor night" clause because that was just impossible. But because it was always day or night, one of the things I did with it was split cards where one side could only be cast during the day and one could only be cast during the night. And while that didn't quite work here, in thinking about those I came up with this design. The flashback means that the first time around you can use it to introduce day/night and the second time around you can cast the mode you like. Or it's already been introduced, the card can do two different things on the first cast vs the second cast. Which I think is really sweet personally.

Falkenrath Bloodhunter 3BB

Creature - Vampire [u]

When ~ enters the battlefield, it deals 3 damage to target creature or planeswalker an opponent controls. Excess damage is dealt to that player. You gain 3 life.

3/3

I really don't have much of a story here. I needed to fill in an uncommon slot, and black was the best fit colorwise, so I looked at some old designs and found a sorcery with this kind of effect. But I wanted a creature for the slot, cause there were a lot of noncreatures in the booster, so I adjusted it to be a vampire (cause i mean it was clearly a vampire c'mon).

Skirsdag Marauder 4R

Creature - Human Shaman [u]

Whenever ~ attacks, create a 1/1 red Devil creature token tapped and attacking. It has “When this creature dies, it deals 1 damage to any target.” Sacrifice that token at end of combat.

2/3

I thought of the idea of combining red's temporary tokens with devil tokens that have a death trigger cause it felt really clever and fun. And it was a really good fit for the booster so I added it. The numbers changed a little bit, but the ability stayed the same from the beginning. I was slightly worried about having both red cards be devil-related but decided it wasn't a big deal.

Rare

Homeless Drifter 2U

Creature - Human Pirate Peasant [r]

When ~ enters the battlefield, draw two cards then discard two cards.

Disturb 5UU

2/1

Drifting Vessel

[u] Artifact - Vehicle [r]

Flying

When ~ enters the battlefield, mill five cards. Create a 1/1 white Spirit creature token for each creature card milled this way.

If ~ would be put into your graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.

Crew 5

6/5

I love the disturb mechanic. I think it has a ton of design space outside of what was used in this set with the strict human (or hippogriff) -> spirit paradigm. I wanted to tap into that outside design space while still sticking with a design that felt at place in the set. I at one point had a design where the front side was a Clue, which I think was pretty fun, but I ended up needing to change things around for one reason or another. So I came up with this where technically the backside is a vehicle but it conveys the whole trope of "ghost ship with a ghost crew" and still makes some number of Spirits on ETB so i feel like its not out of place in the set while still being unique. It does mean I didn't end up with any investigate related cards though, sadly.

And that's all the cards! I decided to just stop including a basic in the booster, cause there's really no benefit to putting it in there, so there's only 14 cards in here. What do you think? Any designs seem too strong? Or too weak? Or just generally unfun? Let me know in the notes!

Previous challenges:

- Zendikar Rising (I haven’t copied this one to tumblr so y’all get a reddit link)

- Commander Legends

- Kaldheim

- Strixhaven

- Modern Horizons 2

[ask-the-guiding-light-cast]

Guiding Light turns two years old today!

It’s crazy to think this all began only a couple of years back... and also hilarious it falls on the same day as “International Mystery Dungeon Day” over on Twitter. More after the cut. This is gonna be a long one, so I appreciate anyone willing to read this. ^^

For a long time, I had been a casual consumer of fan fics. It started in the late 2000s when I was in a Spyro craze thanks to the more story-driven Legend of Spyro trilogy. I had an itch that I needed scratched and FFN fulfilled that to some extent. I also looked at some Mario fics, including Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun, which I greatly enjoyed and thought did a good job adapting the formula that made Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so beloved and putting a unique spin on things.

But it was until the early 2010s that I actually started getting back into Pokémon games with Gen V. After Emerald, I fell out of touch with Pokémon for a time. When Gen VI came around, I dipped my toe into the fandom through Twitch livestreams, but also through reading a few anime-based fics that are very long and still going, even now. 

At the same time, I ended up buying PMD: Explorers of Sky... and damaged my cartridge before I could properly finish the game with my Vulpix/Riolu team. So, I watched cutscenes for what I missed on YouTube, then got Gates to Infinity and, later, Super Mystery Dungeon and had fun with both of them... though more for the stories and characters than the actual gameplay. Truth be told, I don’t care much for roguelikes at all.

It was during the gap in time between Super’s release and the first official footage of Sun & Moon in mid-2016 that I found myself hit with a recurring thought: “What if someone made a PMD story where the hero and the partner are forced to fight one another with the fate of the world at stake?” I wound up (loosely) brainstorming an idea for a PMD story revolving around an antagonistic Hoopa character who would use its ring portals to collect entire communities, including the Pokémon living in them... all so that he would never be bored. This would lead him to “collect” the partner to add to his “toys,” so when the hero shows up, he’d sic the partner on them.

But that was as far as I got with the idea. I ended up graduating college and took a job with late evening hours. It left me pretty tired and exhausted and unmotivated to do much of anything. I withdrew from the parts of the Pokémon community I was involved in.

Then the Generation VII games came out and, while divisive in the fandom, I found myself really liking some of the concepts. There were so many times when I thought, “Gee, I wonder what this would be like if it were in a PMD game?” For example, one of the ideas I had was a sort of edgy rival rescue team akin to Gladion, which would have a Midnight Lycanroc, a Zoroark, and a Type: Null character in it.

So, toward the end of 2016 and early 2017, I started creating an idea for a Choose Your Own Adventure story with the intent of putting it on this really small forum I was a part of. It would be a Gen VII-themed PMD story, but because I didn’t think that sounded interesting enough, I decided that, not only would the human keep their memories, but they would be from the real world and be a major Pokémon nerd. The idea was that the choices the readers made would affect the relationship between the human and partner. I even came up with a point system. The more points the readers earned for their choices, the “closer” the relationship the hero and partner would have and the happier an ending the story would get. If the hero and partner couldn’t stand each other, one of them would likely end up working with the bad guy and winning. If they became steadfast friends, they’d work together to save the world.

Unfortunately, the forum shut down before I got too far into planning it, so I shelved the idea and continued focusing on my job. And things stayed that way for several months, until I ended up getting into med school and scrambling to move.

During the downtime I had when I wasn’t doing moving related stuff, I decided to look at FFN again and found Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Defenders of Warmth. I wound up reading through the entirety of the story quite quickly. I guess you could say it sparked something in my head. The fic itself focuses on what, at the time, was the newest Gen (Gen V). It also has multiple humans and is set on a continent separate from the canon locations (which were just the Air and Grass Continents, since Gates and Super didn’t exist when the fic was written). In short, it renewed my desire to pursue my idea of a Gen VII-flavored PMD story.

So, I set about creating my story outline. It is so... so much different from the actual story, though I’ve gone into that in previous posts (search for #amby answers). Originally, I used Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the framework for the fic: an alien invasion in a colorful, comedic world. I took more specific cues, too. Zero was meant to be a (mostly) silent antagonist a la Princess Shroob, for example.

The problem was, I really didn’t have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I’d like to say I was writing for myself, but I really did want validation, too. I think any author is lying to themselves if they say they don’t feel this way at some point. Because of this, I figured if I put the fic on FFN, it would get ignored. The site’s huge! There were, at the time, around 85k fics in the Pokémon section alone. (That number’s since gone up to over 90k!)

Given I had experience with forums, I decided to post it to Serebii, because the fic community seemed much smaller and more open to giving feedback to one another. In an effort to try and, y’know, establish some connections, I actually read other pieces and reviewed them before posting any stories. This also helped me build up a backlog of chapters and prove to myself I enjoyed writing this enough to keep going.

When I finally did post the fic, it was a bumpy start, for sure. I do think I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate, including uploading chapters way too quickly for readers on Serebii to (reasonably) try to keep pace. That probably cost me a few potential readers... or made them silent readers who I never ended up hearing from. Which is why I’m especially thankful to @girl-like-substance (who I can seem to tag, drat) for all of the well-thought-out feedback given throughout the fic’s run. I don’t think I would’ve made such significant strides in my writing otherwise... and there are plenty of long-running fics where the quality tends to stagnate.

In any case... it was thanks to a request from @deliriousabsol to put the fic somewhere more mobile-friendly that I chose to mirror Guiding Light on FFN starting in October 2017. I would’ve kept going on Serebii had she not asked so nicely, so she’s the one you can thank for it showing up there! (She’s a fellow author who does cyberpunk-themed fics and art and her characters have cameoed in the fic.)

And, honestly, I’m just... beyond shocked at what wound up happening to the fic once it hit FFN. Well, actually, for the first several months I was lucky if I even got a comment when I put up a chapter. I’m not sure any of the people who first commented on FFN still follow the fic anymore. I haven’t seen/heard from them at all, so I assumed they moved on with their lives.

In any case, around March of 2018, the word count on FFN passed 300k and... somehow, the fic starting getting more attention. Like, a lot more attention. This was... not really something I was even remotely prepared for.

(Yes, this means there’s gonna be a giveaway. More on that later.) I never would’ve thought I’d reach a number like this. I never imagined I’d meet another PMD author who’d be willing to do a fun collab (thanks @virgil134, Spiteful Murkrow, and Namohysip). I really did not imagine that I’d ever get fanart of characters that I wrote (huge thanks @thebreak-ofdawn, @ask-nicky-and-others, and @cresselia92). I mean, above everything, I not expect the fic or characters to resonate with anybody the way it wound up.

A part of me feels like I don’t really deserve it. I’ve made a lot of serious gaffes with writing this. When initial Serebii feedback had people intrigued by Shane’s jerkass attitude (when I didn’t actually intend for him to come off as a jerk), I dialed things up in the hopes I’d keep their attention. It probably cost me readers. Then there’s the slow pacing of the early episodes and the mistake of making Special Episode 3 as long as it was... which my speaks to my (bad) tendency to give into some of my strongest impulses even though I had an outline I was trying to stick to.

And, I mean, there’s also some of the “shamlessly shameful” stuff I’ve done with the fic. I’m not fooling myself. Guiding Light has grown progressively more furry and, uh, probably fanservicey, too. All the big furbait (and some scalebait) ‘mons are accounted for. There’s a lot more sexual humor when I initially promised myself I would stay away from romance and keep everything platonic. I practically turned Xerneas into waifu bait, if some of these asks are anything to go by. This blog certainly didn’t help in that regard. Maybe I’m just being my usual nervous self? 

I am worried that this fic’s performance has, somehow, affected my thoughts and behavior. There are very popular fic authors who let their popularity get to their head... or chose to open up Patreons (something that makes me uncomfortable) or start doing things like taking commissions for written pieces, which is understandable... though I think it’s an easy way to lose your passion for writing. I guess some of that worry stems from a debacle I learned about on a Discord server I’m in, but that’s not something I’m comfortable discussing publicly. 

And I haven’t even talked much about the blog itself. Like, it somehow passed 100 followers? Where? When? How? I don’t actually draw stuff like many other Pokéasks. And, like, for a lot of folks, I have no idea if they’ve actually read the fic or just check in on the blog. It’s the same with the fic, I suppose. If you’re a silent reader/follower, I would really love to hear from you! I promise... I don’t bite or anything. I’d love to know what (if anything) you’re thinking. And if you’re a blog that’s following this one and we haven’t interacted, please feel free to reach out! It’s honestly hard to tell if people like what I’m doing, so any feedback is always appreciated.

In any case, if I haven’t lost you by now, I guess all I can say is... thank you. Thank you all so much for all of the support... whether it’s on the fic, the blog, or both of them. I really do hope this final episode can meet your expectations. I’ll try my very best to make this an ending to remember. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you guys enjoy it and feel it does justice to the PMD series.

Sorry for all the rambling. The inbox is open again if you’d like to send any messages for the ficaversary. Again, thank you all so much! You’re the best!

[plumbobgothica]

Season 1, Episode 5: Not So Darling (part 1)

General Content Warning: Flavors of Midnight is intended for mature audiences and contains themes or imagery that may be upsetting for some readers.

<previous // next >>

Read the full chapter on Simblr.cc (content warning: drugs, potentially disturbing imagery, alcohol).

Table of Contents

Transcript, pose credits, and thoughts under the cut.

Transcript

Image 1: A dark, stormy view of Sunset Valley’s lighthouse. Unknown Speaker 1: “Help me!” Image 2: A dark, stormy view of an ocean cove. Unknown Speaker 1: “Please, somebody help me!” Image 3: A teenage girl floats face-down in the water. Unknown speaker 2: “Frida? FRIDA!” Image 4: The scene cuts to a messy coffee table with pill bottles, weed, and empty beer bottles. Frida is asleep on the couch in the background. Image 5: Frida’s eyes burst open as she wakes from her dream to the sound of knocking at the door. Image 6: Frida is clutching at her throat, glancing around at the messiness of her trailer home. Xander Clavell: “Frida! Are you okay? Open the door!”

Poses

In this post, I used poses from @poses-by-bee and LunaSimsCreations. 🖤

Thoughts

Let me know if the font size on the images is okay, or if you'd prefer it to be bigger. :)

Thanks for reading!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Dragon Age II

Dragon Age is a series very near and dear to my heart; ever since playing Origins back when I was in college, I have been inspired by the stories, characters, and lore. Hell, Origins alone is a huge inspiration to my writing, and why wouldn’t it be? It has great locations, deep lore, a core main party without a single weak link with each and every party member you have being unique and entertaining in their own right, and an epic story with all sorts of twists and turns. And it only has two really shitty segments in the whole game! It’s truly a great first entry in a series.

But despite my love for it, I put off playing the sequel for most of the decade, only playing it for the first time this year. And why is that? Because… the critics said it was bad… yes, unfortunately in my younger years I took what critics said without any grains of salt. Dragon Age II was not very popular back around the time it came out, mostly because of its radical departure from the style of the first game, with more hack-and-slash-esque combat, a much more simple and self-contained story, and a cast of characters far more divisive than the first time around. It’s only over time that people have started to give it the respect it deserves, but much like fellow fantasy series The Legend of Zelda it comes at the cost of the current game being bashed.

So how is this red headed stepchild of a sequel, anyway? Did the critics have a point, or is this really an underrated gem? Well, I’m happy to report that this is indeed a fun and fantastic game, and I heavily regret being kept apart from the lovely Merril for so long due to poor critical reception, but there are a lot of problems too. For everything it does really well, it kind of shits the bed in other areas, and a lot of that can be contributed to a rushed development cycle that got this game churned out just over a year after the first one, leading to things like all items lacking the detailed descriptions they would get in the first game, which doesn’t sound like much, but then you get an item called something like “Uncle Horky’s Spanking Rod” as a magic staff and there’s no explanation as to why it’s called that and you have to imagine up some ludicrous backstory for it.

The lack of flavor text is a minor gripe, though, compared to the obnoxiously repetitive environments of dungeons. Reusing and flipping dungeons around and reusing assets would be one thing, but here they literally just take a map, flip it a bit with no changes to the details of the level, and just block off doors that lead to areas they don’t want you going. The worst part is on your mini map you can see the blocked pathways you likely saw ten minutes ago in another dungeon, which just makes a lot of the missions feel bland and samey. It also doesn’t help that enemy types are rather paltry, so you’ll be fighting a lot of the same mooks in the same maps over and over as you grind for items, gold, and EXP.

And then there are some of the characters. The worst of the bunch are sadly two characters who are returning from the first game and its expansion Awakening – Anders and Isabela. Isabela is arguably worse, because she honestly seems rather fun and nice at first, if overly and aggressively flirty, but as the story goes on, it’s revealed that she is actually the cause behind some of the biggest issues in the first few acts, which she neglects to tell you until it is far too late and unless you decided to maximize your friendship with her, she will run off and never return to your party. I can’t deny that this completely soured me to her, and at the end of the quanari invasion of Kirkwall I was only upset I couldn’t find her in act three and kick her ass for what she did.

Then there is Anders. Poor, poor Anders. In Awakening, he was one of the most funny and charming characters, a nice little substitute for Alistair that I actually ended up liking for than the Weenie King of Ferelden. Here though? Anders can not go one fucking conversation without bringing up how oppressed mages are and how much the templars suck and blah blah blah. The worst part is I do agree with him, but he’s just so whiny and obnoxious about it I left him behind all the time, dooming my party to having no healer even as I fought high dragons, blood mages, and Corypheus. It was worth it to not hear Anders bitching about templars and insulting Merril and Fenris. Oh, and Anders nukes the chantry and sets off a civil war. Isabela may be a nasty bitch, but Anders definitely comes out looking like a huge cunt by the game’s end.

The entire endgame is kind of an utter mess too, seeing as no matter whose side you join you end up fighting the same two bosses, with one of them just not making any sense whatsoever. And then the game just sort of ends on a very unsatisfying cliffhanger. And as much as I just complained, all of this stings because really, the rest of the game is quite good, and the story is fun if scaled back from the epic tale of Origins.

Let’s get the obvious best part out of the way: Varric. Varric is literally the best part of the entire Dragon Age franchise. He’s a snarky, wisecracking surface dwarf with no beard who writes best-selling novels, constantly has his shirt open to show off his magnificent chest hair, and has a crossbow named Bianca that he is uncomfortably attached to. He is one of the greatest characters ever created, and there was not one single moment I left him out of my party, because he is a blast to have around, and what’s more, if there’s ever a situation where the dialogue wheel pops up and you can let him talk… you’ve won. This guy can talk his way out of any situation. There’s nothing bad you can say about Varric, and he is in fact the only companion in the game I can wholeheartedly stand behind as a paragon of great writing.

I love the other characters, don’t get me wrong, but they have their issues. Aveline and Fenris in particular, with Aveline being a bit too by-the-books at times to the point where she exacerbates the quanari conflict by demanding that elves who killed a guard who raped one of their own be turned over to her after they converted to the Qun. This is all despite her knowing full well that the poor elf girl would have otherwise gotten no justice seeing as how city elves in this setting are second class citizens at best. Still, she has a rather adorkable romance questline where you hook her up with one of the guards, and she’s not a bad person, just a touch misguided at times.

That last sentence can also apply to Fenris, but on a grander scale. He’s a cool, edgy, brooding elf who absolutely fucking hates magic with every fiber of his being. He is the Anti-Anders, though he’s far less annoying about it, and it’s hard to really blame him for being bitter seeing as he was a sex slave for an evil wizard for most of his life and then just had misfortune after misfortune piled on him. I really hated how mean he was to Merril, but otherwise I warmed to him and befriended him.

And that brings us to a very special girl, Merril. Merril is an adorable, klutzy, scatterbrained blood mage elf who is hated by her people due to the lengths she is going to repair an ancient artifact to bring a piece of her people’s heritage back. While she can be a bit arrogant and stubborn about the whole thing, it’s mostly due to how no one around her seems to believe in and support her; naturally, I believed in and supported her, and while things still managed to go south, she seemed at least to learn a little bit. Overall I found her to be an absolute sweetheart, and she never left my party, much like Varric; frankly, I was going in expecting not to like her and was going to romance Fenris instead, but as it turns out Merril won my heart immediately and my Hawke went lesbian this playthrough.

On that note, as much as I like how Merril, Fenris, Isabela, and Anders can be wooed by either gender in principle, I do kind of feel making everyone bisexual with no rhyme or reason kind of cheapens things. It’s weird for me, a bisexual myself, to be saying that, but it just feels off to be able to get together with everyone, with everyone being Schrodinger’s Bisexual until a romance is initiated. It’s nowhere near as bad as Skyrim, but I just feel it kinda cheapens the romance options. I prefer Origins and Inquisition in that regard, where you don’t have all the options but you do have some unique choices. But, hey, at the end of the day I’m hardly complaining that my Lady Hawke got to polish Merril’s Eluvian, if you know what I mean.

Aside from the characters, I think the game’s real strength lies in its story, which is fitting since the entire game is framed as a story being told by no less a storyteller than our pal Varric. It has a three act structure, with each act detailing a different year in Hawke’s rise to become the Champion of the city of Kirkwall, which is a crime-ridden wretched hive of scum and villainy. The first act mainly has Hawke making a name for themselves, living in the slums with their uncle, doing dirty work to try and get back a little prestige, and recruiting all of their allies, with the act culminating with a trip to the Deep Roads, every DA fan’s favorite location. It’s a nice setup for a lot of twists and turns later in the story, and choices you make in certain dialogue options or quests actually can change what sort of quests you get later. Then again, this is Bioware, so this sort of “action have consequences” gameplay is expected.

Act two deals with just how Hawke becomes the Champion. Rich from the expedition into the Deep Roads, Hawke gets to do all sorts of fun things, such as track down a serial killer who ends up murdering their mom, being stabbed in the back by one of their friends, accidentally inciting a race war that nearly burns down the city, and having to duel the warrior leader of the qunari to the death in combat. Yeah, act two really piles it on to Hawke, but it does tie into the game’s themes of how no matter the level of success, great actions will also come with great consequences, even actions meant to better one’s lot in life, which also resonate in the personal quests of characters like Merril and Fenris, who despite ultimately achieving their goals in the third act feel hollow, lost, and even broken by the end, and that’s not even getting into what Anders does. However the conflict with the qunari is resolved, Hawke is declared the Champion, and things seem ok.

But then comes act three, and boy do things go wrong. Knight-Commander Meredith has gone cuckoo for Coco Puffs and conflict between templars and mages seems inevitable; this act is basically wrapping up hanging plot threads and companion quests until Anders finally nukes the chantry and all hell breaks loose, leading to the final battle. The ending here isn’t particularly happy, with Hawke ultimately ending up a fugitive in the epilogue, and things can get even worse if you make poor choices in Inquisition, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Here’s the thing: everything I just said? It could be entirely different from my playthrough depending on the choices you make. Sure, some things are inevitable, like Anders committing terrorist acts, Hawke’s mother dying, and Meredith going absolutely bonkers and making you fight statues, but depending on how you play, maybe you’ll like/romance Isabela, maybe you’ll resolve things with the Arishok differently, maybe you’ll side with the templars… the story ends the same but there are so many ways to make your story different. Throw in some great lore, some fun DLC that reveals some shocking truths about the lore, and the fun albeit simplified combat, and you’ve got a game here that has a lot of replay value if only to see where all the plot threads can lead.

I definitely think this is a good game, even a great one. It has its share of problems, but so did Origins, and frankly I’d sooner put up with the backstabbing pirate hooker and the pissy mage terrorist again then go through the fucking Fade and Deep Roads one more time. If you liked the first one, definitely give this a shot; you may end up liking or disliking some of the stuff I dislike and like. That’s the fun of these Bioware games, different aspects are going to appeal to different people. The question is, do I find it better than Origins?

In some respects, yes; I much prefer the simpler combat here, and I like the more down-to-earth story in this one, but at the same time Origins just had stronger characters overall and I’m a sucker for “save the world” fantasy tales. While Origins infamously had some real mind-numbing slogs in the form of the Fade sequence and the Deep Roads, while those environments were tedious at least they weren’t boring. But on the other hand… Origins didn’t have Varric.

 It’s really a tossup, frankly, and I love both games a lot. I think each of them has their place and each of them brings something interesting to the table for the series. It’s one you really need to play for yourself to get a good grasp on; don’t be like me and put it off for nearly ten years, give it a go right after your done with the first game and see how you feel. Your experience is going to be a lot different than mine, that’s for sure.

[nozomijoestar]

Instead of following this meme as a list of ask prompts I love the idea so much I want to do everything in one go myself

The Bowl of Embers - What would be the title of your trial listed as in the duty-finder?

The Endless Dunes  - named this because of the fight location being in a secluded area deep in the Sagolii Desert at night; significant since thats where she was born and raised

Thok ast Thok - Write a brief flavor-text about your trial one would find as a listed description in the duty-finder

At the end of your winding road awaits a figure shrouded in the sands. Life has ceased to be in this barren land; there is but one path forward. The figure meets your gaze unshaken and expectant. The night winds howl in rage. Silence the Warrior of Light. 

Cape Westwind - What is the setting of the battle? Where will it take place?

Deep within the Sagolii Desert in Southern Thanalan, past her birthplace of Forgotten Springs. She used her power in anger to raise earth into a platform surrounded only by towering dunes and some of the locale’s rocky sand filled ravines. Its extremely difficult to enter and life threatening to leave if you aren’t careful. 

The Howling Eye - Write a description of the opening cut-scene preceding the fight

The questline leading up to this fight would involve the player discovering the WoL has gone rogue and wants to renounce the world and herself as Hydaelyn’s instrument. She’s been driven to her breaking point and despairs over the future and freedoms she feels were robbed from her when she was given Echo without consent; thereby made to endure pain and suffering she never asked for. 

Because at this stage she’s been unable to find a cure to get rid of Echo, all her hidden negative emotions have made her snap into a mass of destruction. The  player must fight her to make her come to her senses, which involves killing her multiple times only for her to be revived more pissed than before (due to Hydaelyn continuing to reconstruct her body to reinsert her soul upon any events that would kill her physically- this is my personal explanation for how the Echo buff in gameplay would work lorewise)

---

Player(s) enters the battle area at midnight and looks around to find only the stars and dunes they can’t see past. The entire land is swept by an unnaturally strong wind and sandstorm they shield their face from and as it ends the compact platform in front of them has Vaste standing with her back turned. She’s staring at the sky as you approach and unarmed, then closes her eyes hearing you. She’s known you, or something like you, was coming. When you reach almost halfway she sighs before opening her eyes and reaching her right hand out beside her. In a flash of energy that looks and sounds like lightening and thunder her spear is summoned. The player stops in their tracks, shocked. Slowly she turns appearing furious and assumes battle stance. Cue the traditional FF pan out then zoom in as the frame blurs white.

Thornmarch - What would be your character’s opening dialogue(s) upon the start of the battle?

Approaching party: “You should’ve let me stay gone.”

As players initiate their openers: “There is nothing here but your grave.”

The Chrysalis - What would be your character’s final words upon defeat?

As she falls to the ground: “I see it clear...a world of light.”

The Final Steps of Faith - How would some of the mechanics of the fight operate? Include as many as you want and specify whether it is for hard-mode or extreme (if applicable)

I’ll describe only the EX version but any lower difficulties would roughly the same just not as intensive

Initial phase she’ll hit the MT with enhanced damage Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust combos combined with the Heavy Thrust and Blood for Blood buffs; a special version of the Wheeling Thrust combo called Dragon’s Spin is a tankbuster with massive crit because it has Life Surge effect applied to its damage on final hit, this will come after 20% of total health bar is gone, due to LS 10% of her HP is restored from her damage dealt

As the MT activates their mitigation two cone AoEs will appear behind her diagonally shooting out Geirskogul attacks before alternating position to be two cones facing front of her and repeating the attack, finally the cones will become a pair of rectangles from her sides, she will then perform a centered circle AoE with Dragonfire Dive

The next mechanic sees her use Mirage Dive to chase the party around the arena with rapid small circle AoEs that fan out in position from the center to the edge of the platform before returning to neutral battle stance and using a platform wide AoE that starts at the center and which players will have to run to either the southeast or northwest corners of the arena to take the least damage, this is Dragonsong Dive

From here the arena is shattered and there’s an Active Time Maneuver to get yourself on a stable piece of debris as everyone is tossed into the sky, as the pieces crash back down they form a massive crater that hits down to the rock beneath the sands and the entire area is surrounded by a massive sandstorm 

All party members will gain a Buffeted debuff that does 150 damage constantly until the end of battle due to the environment and can be healed through to deal with but not Esuna’d away

She will land and target the MT with Spinshatter Dive, at this point she’ll buff herself with Battle Litany and enter red Blood of the Dragon to charge Nastrond

As she charges the attack adds will appear called Fragments of Agony that must be destroyed or they will charge her Agony gauge and the Nastrond will instant wipe everyone when it goes off, if everyone successfully kills the Fragments the Nastrond won’t wipe but deal massive damage

There is a brief resting period as she becomes untargetable and creates shades of Yugiri, Estinien, Lyse, Y’shtola, and Haurchefant from memory using leftover charge from her Agony gauge when it was prevented from being filled, players will then have to prioritize all adds in a dps check as they shield her and each has their own AoEs to look out for

After all adds are down she will rejoin the fight with Jump as a large centered AoE, then repeat her initial mechanics before the phase change until brought to 0%

Urth’s Fount - Would there be any mechanics that when ignored would result in an instant wipe?

Failing to stop the Agony gauge from reaching full or failing the dps check will be instant TPKs

The Royal Menagerie - Describe your OC’s techniques or special attacks that the party will have to avoid or be cautious dealing with

Players will need to be on the lookout for Geirskogul, Mirage Dive, Dragonfire and Dragonsong Dive whenever they appear as they’ll hit fast and hard, the entire first phase will also have her in Blood of the Dragon which will increase her attack potency

The Singularity Reactor - Will your character summon adds and companions throughout the encounter, or would it be a single-target fight?

The second phase will have shade memories of her closest NPC friends as adds

Akh Afah Amphitheater - Will your trial be a single-phase fight or will there be different segments to the encounter?

Two phases

Battle on the Big Bridge - What would the battle theme sound like? Will the music shift when the second phase of the fight begins?

The opening music for phase one will be something in the same vein and tone as Ramuh’s Rolling Thunder theme while the second phase shift goes into something closer to Shiva’s Oblivion theme; in both halves of the theme theres an undercurrent beat akin to Revenge Twofold

The Navel - How easy would it be for a DRG to fall off the edge of the stage in your trial?

Since she’s a DRG herself, pretty hard for another to fly off the side since there’s a lot of room just for her attacks to go off well

Castrum Fluminis - Would your OC drop any loot at the end of the fight? If so, describe them (tokens, tomes, weapons, crafting reagents, mounts, etc.)

Her completion reward is two chests with orchestrion rolls for both fight phases respectively, a minion of herself, and rarer a copy of Alba her chocobo mount alongside whatever gear is the current standard ilevel and 50 tomes of the current highest grade

Emanation - Name someone else’s OC you would like to see as a trial boss. Be sure to tag them

@uss-edsall @m14-mod3 and @aethernoise ! You guys don’t have to or you can just rb the meme list up top if you don’t want to do everything at once like I did

Ultima’s Bane - On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the most extreme, how would you rate the difficulty of your trial?

I feel like I probs went a little overboard so a 7-8, if I were to actually run it she’d beat me into the ground lol, gl trying to kill her cuz she’s no pushover

[aion-rsa]

Why Marvel’s Midnight Suns Gameplay Has Fans Worried

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Marvel’s Midnight Suns arguably stole the show during last week’s Gamescom Opening Night ceremony, but the reveal of the upcoming strategy title’s gameplay has already caused a bit of a divide in what recently seemed to be a pretty enthusiastic fanbase.

If you’re watching that gameplay reveal for the first time, you may be wondering what the big deal is. After all, most people assumed that Midnight Suns was going to be a strategy game set in the Marvel universe, and that’s pretty much what it seems to be.

However, much of the controversy surrounding Midnight Suns‘ gameplay at the moment is based on a brief line in that preview regarding the game’s use of a “card” system. It might not sound like much, but that one piece of information has already triggered a heated discussion regarding the game’s potential, its potential association with some especially unpopular ideas, and what all of that means for the considerable expectations fans had for this project.

How Does Marvel’s Midnight Suns Card Gameplay Work?

The video above offers a fairly comprehensive look at Midnight Suns‘ gameplay, but it does gloss over some of the specifics of the upcoming title’s card-based elements. Whether the developers are trying to hide something about that aspect of the title is really the heart of this particular controversy at the moment.

However, the team at Firaxis has shared additional details about Midnight Suns‘ card-based combat system that do help explain how the whole thing will work. Here’s what Jake Solomon, Creative Director at Firaxis, had to say about the game’s card-based combat mechanics in a recent press release:

“In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, you aren’t learning how to fight or gradually grow stronger – you and your fellow heroes are already legends, and must combine everything in your arsenal to stop Lilith. Cards provide a new and refreshing way to approach tactics, allowing us to really go all-out in designing a combat system that makes every hero feel, look, and play differently.”

Elsewhere, IGN expands upon the specifics of Midnight Suns‘ combat system by clarifying it is not a CCG game in the style of titles like Hearthstone or Shadowverse. Instead, Midnight Suns is closer to a deckbuilding roguelike game like Slay the Spire or even a card-based RPG like Baten Kaitos Origins.

Some of the gameplay specifics have yet to be revealed, but it basically sounds like you’ll be dealt a random hand of ability cards at the start of combat. You can acquire new cards and build your own deck through gameplay and story progression, but it seems like part of the game’s strategy will be based on your ability to make the most of the cards you’re ultimately dealt.

On top of that, Midnight Suns allows you to weaponize parts of the environment and use special “team” moves that will maximize your squad’s damage potential. Again, it’s not entirely clear how much randomization will ultimately impact the combat experience, but it does seem like the idea is to add a little variety to every encounter by requiring you to manage different abilities/environmental opportunities. It’s also not entirely clear how movement in the game will work, though it does sound like it will be relatively limited and not nearly as important as it is in Firaxis’ XCOM games.

Basically, Midnight Suns appears to be a squad-based strategy game where your combat actions are determined by “card-like” abilities that you’re dealt at the beginning of combat. Those combat sequences will also seemingly emphasize managing your abilities over positioning/movement, but the game’s environmental damage mechanics and team-building features may add a little depth to the experience.

So what’s the problem with all of that? Well, I’m glad you asked…

Marvel’s Midnight Suns Has to Overcome the CCG Genre’s Bad Reputation

As digital CCGs have become more and more popular over the years (or at least as they’ve become more successful), they’ve also acquired a negative reputation for perfectly representing some of the shadier elements of the modern gaming industry. Specifically, some gamers have been trained to see cards in a video game and think of two potentially major mechanical turn-offs: randomness (RNG) and pay-to-win features.

There’s a degree to which randomness is an unavoidable part of any card-based game. After all, the entire CCG genre is based on playing the hand you’re dealt. However, most fans are ok with that RNG element of the genre as there’s something satisfying about building the best deck possible and trying to outthink your opponent with the help of the cards in your hand.

The problem is that some card games take randomness too far. The prime example of this problem has to be Hearthstone: a CCG that has piled random mechanics on top of random mechanics in recent years to the point where victory can sometimes feel like a roll of the dice rather than the result of being the one who best played the hand they were dealt. While Hearthstone has gotten better about that level of randomness in recent expansions, it’s clear that CCG developers are still resisting the urge to tap into that sometimes addictive “gambling” quality that comes with such wild randomness.

That brings us to the dreaded topic of pay-to-win mechanics and CCG “loot boxes.”

Many CCG titles require you to build your own deck of cards, and most CCG titles require you to buy packs of cards in order to expand your collection. The problem is that you often don’t know which individual cards you’re going to get in a pack. That means your best “strategy” is to buy as many packs as possible in order to help ensure that you eventually find the specific cards you’re looking for.

It’s an unfortunate element of the CCG genre made that much worse by the rise of loot boxes and the many ways that card packs perfectly represent how frustrating loot boxes can be. While you can win those games without spending a small fortune, it’s hard to deny that spending money makes things a little easier.

Will Marvel’s Midnight Suns Have Loot Boxes and Card Packs?

Thankfully, the definitive answer to that question is “No.” In fact, the Midnight Suns team was quick to address this particular concern via Twitter:

Hey folks, regarding our battle card system, there are no loot boxes in Marvel's @MidnightSuns or related microtransactions to get more cards (i.e. Gamma Coils). We will have purely cosmetic character skins for purchase that do not affect game balance in any way https://t.co/lHhdwbMpSZ

— Marvel's Midnight Suns (@midnightsuns) September 1, 2021

That brings us back to the idea that Midnight Suns is closer to a deckbuilding roguelike/RPG than a CCG game. While there’s always a bit of wiggle room here when you’re talking about microtransactions, it at least sounds like you shouldn’t expect to have to buy a bunch of packs just to be able to play Midnight Suns.

While that’s obviously a good thing, that tweet doesn’t exactly address all the concerns fans currently have about Midnight Suns…

Marvel’s Midnight Suns Already Reminds Some Fans of a Mobile Title

Mobile games are undeniably popular, and mobile games are becoming much more complex/interesting, but it’s hard to fault anyone who thinks of microtransactions, shady mechanics, and generally simplified gameplay when they think of mobile games.

It’s the “simplified gameplay” concern that many are applying to Midnight Suns at the moment. Between Midnight Suns‘ use of a still somewhat vague card system and the title’s seemingly limited free-roam mobility mechanics (at least in combat scenarios), some fans are already worried that Midnight Suns is being developed to eventually become a mobile game or, at the very least, represent the more mainstream mechanics that typically make mobile games more accessible to wider audiences. For what it’s worth, no mobile version of Midnight Suns has been confirmed at this time (the game will instead launch for PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S).

While that may prove to be a gross oversimplification of what’s actually happening, it’s hard to deny that what we’ve seen of Midnight Suns‘ gameplay so far does feel a bit closer to what you might see in a mobile game than what you’d typically expect from a modern strategy title made specifically for PC or consoles. That doesn’t mean that Midnight Suns won’t be strategically engaging, and it also doesn’t mean that it will be “bad.” It just means that the first impression many people had about Midnight Suns‘ gameplay seems to be based on what kinds of games the project currently resemble as well as the games it doesn’t resemble.

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Ultimately, Some Fans Are Disappointed that Marvel’s Midnight Suns Isn’t XCOM

One of the first things that Firaxis did after Midnight Suns‘ reveal was make it very clear that this will not be an XCOM-style strategy game. However, reactions to Midnight Suns‘ gameplay reveal have made it clear that not everyone got that message.

Actually, that’s a little unfair. It seems that some people do understand that Midnight Suns isn’t supposed to be an XCOM game, and they’re just not happy about that. There are quite a few people out there who seemingly just want to play an XCOM game set in the Marvel universe, and I sympathize with that desire. Those certainly sound like two great flavors, and it’s easy to imagine how such a game probably could have ended up being a lot of fun.

This is ultimately the burden of introducing something even a little bit different, though. Maybe Midnight Suns‘ will leave us all wishing it had just been an XCOM game, but it’s certainly interesting to see that the Midnight Suns team has had to spend so much time explaining what kind of game it “isn’t” as opposed to really talking about what kind of game it is. Some of the blame there lies with the quality of the initial reveal videos themselves (which didn’t do the best job of properly explaining how the game will actually play), but this might be a bigger sign of how brutal gut reactions can be at a time when having a gut reaction to nearly everything is becoming more of an expectation. In this particular instance, it doesn’t help that the game instantly reminded people of the gameplay/monetization sins of others.

Midnight Suns could be great, could be terrible, or it could fall into that dreaded middle-ground that is hard to make memes about and is therefore useless to a good chunk of the internet. Much as we saw in the case of Saint’s Row, though, first impressions are indeed worth a lot when they’re all we really have, and there’s a degree to which Midnight Suns already faces an uphill battle on the way to its March 2022 release date.

The post Why Marvel’s Midnight Suns Gameplay Has Fans Worried appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[housebeleren]

Throne of Eldraine Prerelease Recap

I’m a little behind here, but I did attend the Throne of Eldraine Prerelease, and generally had a good time. The preview season made me super stoked to crack open these packs, since the flavor of this set is off the charts. I’m very happy to say that opening the packs was every bit as fun as I expected. If only the limited environment play lived up to it.

Art: Joe Slucher

For this Prerelease, I ended up doing 2 Headed Giant, because that was the only option available at a time I could do. The combined pools had a lot of good options. Our promos were Robber of the Rich and Giant Killer, both of which deserved to be played. I also opened Embercleave, which was probably the biggest bomb of our packs. So it was very clear we were going to do Red and White in some combination of our decks. The next question was what else would we play.

After a cursory look at our pool, the odd color out was Blue. Our Blue was awful. Nothing great, and only a few even playables. Black had amazing removal, and Green had some solid threats. In the end, we decided that Green & Black paired better together, since they had the Food synergies (plus we had Savvy Hunter, and that was a strong pull into the color combo). So that left Red & White to combine into the second deck.

In play, the decks performed decently. We won the first round, with my Red removal keeping the board clear and ultimately winning with Tempting Witch to break the board stall. The second matchup was going okay for a bit, but they had one incredible Red/Blue control deck that blew up in the late game. The final match was a joke. They had 2 copies of Outlaws’ Merriment, and they landed them on turn 4 and 5. There was no fighting that, and we lost in short order. So, only 1-2 for the night, but some decent gameplay.

General Format Notes

Control is real. There are lots of defensive early creatures, not a lot of super aggressively costed threats, and plenty of card draw, removal, and counterspells that are actually worth playing. Time will tell how the format itself balances out, but it definitely feels like control will have a seat at the table.

There are bombs, but they’re not all Mythic. Certainly most of the Mythics are pretty close to bombs, but there are lots of cards at lower rarities that can run away with the game too. 

The removal is pretty universally good, but not necessarily plentiful. It’s going to be really difficult in this format to choose between removal and riskier high-payoff cards like Improbable Alliance.

Mono color seems like it will be a thing, but don’t expect to always be able to make it work. Most of the time, 2 color decks are probably your best bet, but every now and then a mono color deck will come together.

Adamant rewards skewed mana bases. If you have Adamant payoffs, or cards that are heavy in one color like the Rare legends, try to push your deck towards a 10-7 split, favoring one color strongly over the other.

Food is kinda a nuisance, and honestly should have been downgraded to gaining 2 life. Gaining 3 life a pretty big rider on a lot of cards, and it can make the games stall out really easily. But if you’re playing Food, it’s great. 

Card-Specific Notes

For this, the theme is going to be Read the Fucking Card. Seriously, this format has so many “gotcha” cards that punish you for not reading them carefully. If I had one last general format note, it would be to read cards very, very carefully, because they often don’t work exactly as you think.

Questing Beast is the poster child for this. The card is a wall of text, and even after playing against it in Arena for the last few weeks, I still can’t remember what it’s fucking abilities all are. Do yourself a favor and read this card every single time you see it. Don’t assume you remember what it says because you’ve probably forgotten. Oh, it’s also pretty damn good, but not actually unbeatable. A lot of the removal in the format will get it.

Acclaimed Contender is a card covered in words. It gets you a Knight. Or an Aura. Or an Equipment. Or a Legendary Artifact. But definitely not a non-Legendary non-Equipment Artifact. Oh, but it only does any of this if you already control another Knight, so don’t forget about that and cast it on curve without a buddy out, you fucking ninny. Seriously, they tried so hard to make this fit into every possible limited theme that white touches, and the end result is this utter mess of a card.

Hushbringer? The ‘80s called. They want their album cover back. Oh, and don’t forget this shuts down death triggers too, not just ETB triggers like every other card in this space has historically done. Honestly just the way the line splits, the word “dying” is so easy to skip over.

Merfolk Secretkeeper should have been a 0/3. Creatures are small in this format, and having a 0/4 is such a brick wall against anything except big Green decks. 

Midnight Clock triggers on each upkeep. Don’t miss that crucial line of text because it honestly changes everything. This card is playable.

You’ll need to read Syr Konrad at least once each turn that he is on the board. Or, just put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you say or even think the word “Graveyard.” 

Opportunistic Dragon can only steal Artifacts and Humans, two totally similar things.. I guarantee someone fucked this up and tried to steal an Ogre or something on Prerelease day.

Robber of the Rich...... oh Jesus. This card has 10 rulings upon release in Gatherer, so we must be doing something right. Okay, so his ability only triggers when you attack if an opponent has more cards in hand than you do. And then, you get to cast the card only if you attacked with a Rogue this turn. Fortunately, there are a plethora of Rogues in Eldraine... What? There are 4 others, and two of them are Mythics, so practically speaking there are only 2 others? Cool. Thanks for adding a confusing and basically worthless line of text that only serves to make the card more inscrutable. Why have this text about Rogues in a set that literally does not have anything to do with Rogues? Why not just say “during any turn you attacked” or just not have a condition at all? Seems fine to me. Oh, and it has Reach, because sure. Apparently there was a sale on Reach in this set, because it shows up on all kinds of Rares for reasons, instead of on Commons and Uncommons that could actually use it.

Oko, Thief of Crown’s +1 ability doesn’t wear off. Ever. So... yeah, just track that with normal methods that you definitely brought to FNM with you. Maybe just write on the card. Also, have I mentioned this card is busted?

And now we get to the single biggest missed flavor opportunity in the entire set. Crystal Slipper. Seriously, why on Earth is this a Red equipment that grants Haste? What person runs faster after they put on glass footwear? Literally nobody, not even Cinderella, which is why the damn thing fell off as she was trying to run because glass shoes are probably goddamn heavy and not meant for running in. How’s this for a better flavor win? 1W, equip 2. Equipped creature has Lifelink and can’t be blocked by creatures with power 3 or greater. In other words, the Crystal Slipper turns the creature into a Beloved Princess! And then when the slipper is removed, it goes back to what it was before! Seriously... the current version is a flavor fail of pretty epic proportions.

Alright, that’s it for the Throne of Eldraine prerelease. I know I got into some other stuff at the end there, but that’s because some time has passed since the actual event, and I have thoughts. Hope everyone enjoys this format. Looks to me like it’ll be a mixed bag that alternates between fun and hair-pulling. Hooray!