#fundamentals of creature design

[amalgamationillustration]

Dragins

Inspired by @dramizz-0207 recently sharing a bunch of cool dragon heads. We have pretty different styles but I think that’s cool when that’s the case because then you get really interesting outcomes from the same idea or concept.

Also you can really see my Fundamentals of Creature Design book influences coming through as I try to take real animals and see how they can be dragonified

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Fundamentals of Creature Design | Author: Alex Ries | Publisher: 3D Total Publishing (2020)

[mymomichis-blog]

:33 >miss circle the trans-girl pan-sexual one

[xenowerm]

The three weirdos in my head!

[talenlee]

3e: Alignment Is Invisible

The entire alignment system is sick from the top to the bottom and racist too.

Content Warning: I’m going to talk smack about not just Dungeons & Dragons‘ morality system in 3rd edition, but also, in the process, talk some smack about Christians, and more specifically the Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you’re not here for that, you should find yourself a door.

Few elements of Dungeons & Dragons that lay bare its deeply incoherent roots have endured quite so long as the alignment system. Whenever discussing the alignment system, and by extension, the conception of morality presented in this game, it’s always worth remembering that the framework was devised by, and speaks to the values of, a deeply racist and misogynistic man who in addition to those larger, more structurally common biases, was also a Jehovah’s Witness and heavily informed by the way that that specific sect of American Christianity works.

I’ll spare you a detailed rundown of what I mean by American Christianity (for now, because this is about Dungeons & Dragons), but instead in the broadest strokes indicate that the alignment system that Gygax conceived of was something cosmically tracked and enforced. It was a truly objective morality system; your intention or your attitude did not matter, because there was an absolute right and an absolute wrong to each action, and characters could choose to comply with that right or not, by degrees.

This is why I say racist: It’s a hard fact in the first editions of D&D under Gygax’s most direct control that killing orc children who hadn’t done anything was a moral good; those creatures were evil creatures, and regardless of consequences killing them was good. Gygax quoted the ‘lice make nits’ line from the colonialism of the Americas to reinforce this position, but he was also quite clear that it was the act itself that had its moral valence, not the results or the intention.

This quite frankly deeply evil and immoral ethical framework was the horse to which Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition had to nonetheless hitch its wagon, and the resultant discord show a host of cracks in the way it’s supposed to work. Politicians who starve millions are in no ways doing anything wrong because they’re doing their jobs and there’s nothing evil in signing a piece of paper, but the people who enforce that law and keep orphans away from the food are also not doing anything wrong because they’re just upholding order. The core rulebook of 3rd edition had to try and address this framework without making it too obvious that elements of it were being thrown out the window, especially as the purpose of alignment shifted subtly in the more programmatic, more, let’s say, intentionally designed world of 3rd edition.

See, in 3rd edition, the purpose of alignment was first and foremost to let you target things. Oh sure, it was flavour, it helped to inform some monster behaviours or styles, but mostly, you were never going to scan the alignment of things you fought (not worth the effort) which meant that what alignment did was let you make reasonable guesstimates for smart-targeting of spells and effects. If you threw a spell that protected you from evil creatures into the mix it meant that you had some control over the kinds of threats you’d deal with and then prioritise them. In the purest sense, this was a reference point for magical spells.

Secondarily to that, it informed the moral valence of what you were doing and it was with the rulebooks The Book of Vile Darkness and its prettier but equally vacuous cousin The Book of Exalted Deeds that 3rd edition attempted to really roll up its sleeves and discuss morality in a way that could square the circle of previous editions’ heinous moral landscape and 3rd edition’s attempt to improve it by just rearranging some of the words.

The problem, such as it was, is that alignment was fundamentally invisible. You could have no control over what you did and how it affected you morally, because it was a matter of checking a list of subjects and determining what you did not what you thought or tried to do. If you killed a child and it turns out that child was a shapeshifted demon in disguise, the rules would say that you were in no way morally impacted by your desire to do it. If on the othe hand, you refused to kill the child that was a demon in disguise, because that’s a pretty messed up thing to want to do, then you’d failed to do a good act.

Now, the way the Book of Exalted Deeds tried to grapple with this was by presenting virtues that stood apart from the listed examples of explicitly evil acts. Doing mercy was shown as part of the tension with punishing evil and that’s a pretty good rules patch for the absolutist nature of things. It at least lets the player present something that’s within their control (why they did something) rather than one of those invisible wires around them.

One of the examples the book presented in 3rd edition was that if you climbed a cliff face, and in the process a rock fell and started an avalanche, then that avalanche killed people, then you were morally liable. In fact, a Paladin who did that kind of thing would lose access to their powers, while trying to redeem themselves for the sin of… climbing something.

The added problem with all of this is that no element of opposition or ambition cannot be framed with different moral outlooks that change nothing about how it expresses. A ruthless pursuit of justice and a sadistic love of control over criminals would both be expressed roughly similarly in a Javert-style inspector. A characte’rs own alignment, what they determine their alignment to be is something that can always be rationalised in terms of a framework of moral choices, and those intentions are going to be what informs the actual result of the test. If you’re doing everything right for an asshole reason, the world does not see you as doing evil acts, but your alignment can still be evil because there’s nothing in the world forcing you to change from your mindset of being a total prick.

The 4th edition system did try and push back against this with some interesting ideas of its own, but based on watching people talking about 5th edition games? Boy howdy they did not learn from that and instead decided to RETVRN to the worst version of the system so far.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[linked-maze]

I absolutely love your character concepts and how you re-design characters while keeping them fundamentally /them/, its so interesting! I was wondering if you would maybe be willing to draw Midna and Fi interacting in someway, maybe Midna questioning her companionship when this creature pops out of Link's sword- Bonus points for a bewildered Twilight who has never seen Fi before :D

there we go! XDDDD Twilight is so stunned! and Midna is not a fan of this new creature trying to steal her place!

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Before I end up making that post I want to talk about briefly with the release of IS5 again, the concept of each IS havin a fundamental theme of unreality to them. I really like this, because it feels like in a pretty unsubtle way a solid way to ground the structure of a roguelike setting into what is normally a pretty grounded storyline.

IS1, Ceobe's Fungimist (please Hypergryph let it return), is a hallucination caused be Ceobe eating weird forest mushrooms. Nothing that happens in IS1 is real, explicitly. However, IS1 is fundamentally drawing from something, and in Ceobe's case, it seems to be drawing from her memories of traveling abroad Terra looking for the origins of her axe (and food, of course). What are things Ceobe's remembers happening to her, what are hallucinations filing in the gaps, and what are Ceobe catching glimpses of fundamental truths of the world (the Black Procession and the Feranmut skeleton that is Maybe? Lifebone for instance) is left extremely vague. Characters such as the Frozen Monstrosity do seem to genuinely exist, but there was no Frozen Monstrosity in Lungmen. Was Ceobe using something she herself experienced in place of Frostnova, or is Ceobe hallucinating the entire thing regardless? Who knows. Ceobe probably doesn't have the answers for you.

IS2 has explicit themes of madness and deception, and although I do not find him a particularly compelling character or plot device, a playwright who can literally warp reality with his plays. Much of the stage design recycles echoes the stage design from IS1, almost as if the Troupe is welcoming you, the player, onto their stage. You aren't here to discern the truth behind the Troupe, you're here to save one man, and while you are able to peel back the curtains somewhat, you never really do learn what the Troupe is. There are puppets who come to life and whose music damages your souls, there are actors driven so fully into their roles that they end up traveling to Sami to carry out their destined end, there's a Troupe Leader whose defining imagery is puppets and strings, and yet, you're no closer to finding out how this all happened than you are trying to explain why the Knights' Duel node exists.

IS3 asks the question "What if time is like evolution?" and presents its unreality in the form of a sprawling, massive bundle of alternative timelines to your own. It feels almost impossible to line up most of the events and memory mappings and endings on top of each other, and even the endings seemingly branch off into several versions of themselves. While, for example, the Irene encounter maps onto her own memory mapping story, we never see the timeline involving Lumen's memory mapping in the game at all. There is no Seaborn version of Gladiia in-game for you to fight. This is made seemingly all the more uncanny by the fact that there is actually a canon timeline going on, and the implication through the Bosky event that you are only seeing these alternative timelines because curiosity got the better of you. You came into contact with technology alien and yet familiar, and as a result, your good little timeline where you just save a girl who tries to commit identity death turns into you having to watch from the third person a version of the world where you and Mizuki are potentially the only intelligent life left on Terra for all eternity.

(No seriously, this ending is fucked up, what the fuck.)

IS4, on the other hand, gives us a reality that is unraveling, so fragile and malleable that you can cause things to manifest out of sheer force of will, something there are explicit warnings about not doing. It's a land where the living become the shambling, almost mechanical dead, and the mechanical being living creatures. It's a world where the abyss looks back at you, and finds you to be worth destroying. Gravity isn't right, time isn't right, language isn't right, snow falls black and the dead rise once again to beckon you home. There's nightmares in the shadows, and they're eating away at everything.

Sorry shit I got dark there. IS5 is Nymph's happy little storytime where she explores future and alternative versions of Kazdel through the imagination of her and her compatriots. What if Theresis and Theresa worked together and Nasti completed her designs (and maybe committed a genocide????) and Kazdel was a flying utopia city? What if the Teekaz all walked in a different direction and became the Sankta, or all became the Anasa? You know, sometimes you lose your sense of reality and become dependent on the visions you see from the Revenants, sometimes you need a little bunny to pull you out, and sometimes those Revenants might have actually caused a new reality to exist but haha, don't worry about that.

What if, hahaha, just saying what if, there was a version of Amiya in a world where the Sarkaz barely exist, where she was given the crown by a dying Theresa with no guidance on how to use it ethically? Haha I mean, what if Kal'tsit wasn't around? What if, just theoretically, there was a version of Amiya for whom the most formative person in her life was the decaying mind of a man stuck as an AI program who kept his people alive for 10,000 years? What if, hehehehe you know, what if, there were special endings you got for each of the stories you told where you went onto fight her, showing up closing up those stories, those worlds, to eternally protect them until she can find the answer to all troubles? What if the Sarkaz prophecy from Chapter 7 kept coming up, over and over again, the prophecy of an Amiya who would melt millions of lives into memories over and over again? What if this was an Amiya so immediately dangerous that the Sankta version of Buldrokkas'tee doesn't hesitate in trying to kill her?

I mean that would be a really scary story if it was true. Really it's Nymph's special storytime with the revenants. Don't worry about it.

Anyways I love pretty much each of these takes (IS2 is definitely the weakest though) and it shows a lot of thought from the storywriters about how they wanted to integrate a roguelike mode into their game.

[pinkydragon01]

Nintendo vs Pocket Pair is worse than you think

When Palworld came out, it took the gaming world by storm and became an instant hit with players who enjoy a mixture of creature collecting and survival base building. However, when a new game stirs up this much publicity, it catches both positive *and* negative attention.

There's no question about how similar Pals look to Pokemon, and there's much debate over the authenticity around Palworld's model designs. So much so, people were raising alarm to Nintendo to investigate Pocket Pair for IP infringement. Which Nintendo responded with a lukewarm, "We'll look into it."

After months of silence, Nintendo has now come forward with a lawsuit against Pocket Pair, but not for what we thought. The lawsuit is not about creature design, it's over *patent infringement.*

The patent in question is specifically over the mechanic of allowing the player to perform "an action of launching" to either "catch a field character or cause a fighting character to fight against a field character."

In simple words, the very act of throwing an item to capture a creature, or to summon a creature to fight another.

This mechanic is fundamental to nearly ALL creature collecting games.

Regardless of your personal feelings regarding Palworld vs Pokemon, this hopefully sounds wrong to you. This legal battle is little more than a billion dollar juggernaut swinging down their hammer onto an indie studio. It doesn't matter Pals *look* like pokemon. It DOES matter that they are demanding absolute control over creature collecting mechanics.

The patent in question does not even care if the item is sphere shaped like a pokeball. The item used for capture is irrelevant in this extremely broad patent.

Ultimately, Palworld is caught in this because of the massive attention it got, and this lawsuit is setting a deeply disturbing precedent. This lawsuit says, "If you look like a competitor to us, we'll sue you for daring to try."

And that's a danger to all creature collecting games, not just Palworld.

[starberry-cupcake]

I'm back too soon, I'm sorry, I didn't let the last recap marinate enough and that's never a good idea because you can't keep up BUT WE'RE DONE WITH DAY FOUR!!!

previously, in nona del 9:

this happened

this is the general tag, for the uninitiated

CHAPTER 18 (eight house????? mayonnaise uncle???? duracell bunny nephew???? are you with us????)

angel teacher decides to write down an inventory in case they get looted, so that people don't ruin the kids' things

she also orders sriracha girlie to go turn down the generator

it's like when sam jackson was ordered to turn the power back on in jurassic park, idk about that

camilla trips, angel teacher caches her and I'm here thinking if camilla just stole something from her, because she'd never trip in her life

luckily for me, angel teacher asks about nona's drawing

she asks her, specifically, how she drew it and if she had seen what she draw in the picture

nona says she made it up and describes what I think might be an animal

"See these things? They're its ears. This thing is its nose, and you can't see it because I didn't draw it, but the mouth is under here. When first it was born, it used to live in a river, but then it got cold so it had to get large. I know the legs can't rotate, but you don't think that's stupid, do you?"

I thought it was an elephant, because of the ears, nose and lack of mouth in the drawing and legs that can't rotate, but idk about the river and the cold

maybe it's a mammoth

maybe it's a new zealand animal that's going over my head

maybe nona calls flippers legs and it's a whale, for all I know

in any case, DON'T TELL ME

camilla says she hasn't seen it before and angel teacher says it's a "cradle creature"

I was suggested to look up things I don't know in an online dictionary and, if it's not there, assume it's a book thing, but it's not working out with this

camilla (or maybe palmolive) says "I've heard that phrase. Somewhere" and angel teacher says "Have you?"

so maybe it is a book thing

this might be an animal that hasn't been seen by people at this time

like a mammoth for us

or a dodo

or the girl in waterworld who drew land things

and this is a point for the ice cube barbie theory, like the hokey pokey was

so, at this point, palmolive goes "fuck it" and throws caution to the wind

he doesn't say it outright, but I'm assuming it was his thought process

he asks angel teacher if, at some point, she received medical attention from the nine houses and if she's got an implant

this is noodle in that moment:

angel teacher understands, with that, what camolive might be

she goes "my colleague thought you were a prossie" and palmolive goes "What I know about sex work could fit in a teaspoon and leave a lot left over"

the intricacies of pimping and the ins and outs of sex work are very frequent conversations in this school

which is a lot more than I can say for the state of fundamental sex ed in a lot of places with conservative governments that obscure whatever can guarantee safety for all and the accessibility to education with diversity as a key part of it

and ban books, films and conversations about it

ANYWAY

they talk about the nickname the kids gave her and she says it's sriracha girlie's fault because she overheard things she doesn't understand

angel teacher is reticent towards palmolive and tells him that, if he gets close, she'll jump out a window and her body is "designed" to deny him answers

angel teacher thinks camolive is a lyctor, that they did something to her when they fake tripped, and that she might have messed up in some way, which prompted them to come out to her

palmolive swears on the life of camilla that they aren't a lyctor

angel teacher goes "Then that'll make this easier"

and my heart nearly stopped at that

WE KEEP PUTTING CAMILLA IN DANGER

CHISUS CHRIST

angel teacher, I respect you a lot, but if it's between you and camilla

nona is sitting on the ground in the blue light of varun, because she refused to leave camolive alone

and sriracha girlie enters and sees her

next nona knows, she's having the worst headache of her life and everything is a mess around her

when nona comes back from the blue screen in her head, after feeling like her brain was being squeezed out of her skull, she hears a voice cursing and trying to cancel something

angel teacher and the new person are, according to themselves, pretty fucked

new person says "You should have thought of that before you started playing teacher with the frigging Troia experiment"

angel teacher is clearly out of her depth here

I'm wondering where the fuck my wife is and if she's ok

angel teacher says she was trying to protect the kids, which I can appreciate and understand, but right now it's hard to be objective with them

WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHERE CAMILLA IS

MY REACTION REQUIRES A VIDEO, NOT GIF

angel teacher tells the other person "You discharge a firearm with me in the room, you'll get court-martialled and hanged"

which, again, makes me think...is this the most important vet in the planet???? what's this authority level?????

other person says "We play our cards right here, I can get Suffer out clean. Hell—I play this really right, nobody's going to know a thing until it's too late"

which immediately makes me think this is pash

it's insane to be on this side and know how much these people are playing with fire over here

I can't understate what a bad fucking idea this is and the only thing that can save them is that camolive and nona aren't into murdering for sport

but they're even pushing that

unknown person I think might be pash wants to finish off camolive and nona, but angel teacher is like

we suffer really has to deal with people going off like this at the worst possible moments

nona gets up and she's shot at so she gets mad because that's rude af

angel teacher is crying and saying she's sorry

but nona looks for camilla, which THANK YOU

camilla is lying on the ground, holding two bullets in her hands

she gets up and asks for an update

THAT'S FIERCE

SHE'S SO AMAZING

*absolutely insanely dangerous situation* me: where is camilla?????? camilla: *totally alright, holding bullets in her hands or having left lots of people lying on the ground and covered in someone else's blood* me: is this an awkward time to propose?

nona recognizes the other person as pash, with her distinctive machetes, but her way of talking shit and of ruining stuff was already a dead givaway

camilla asks pash why they weren't told angel teacher was one of them and pash is very quick to make clear that camilla isn't part of them

imagine not wanting camilla as part of whatever you're in

can't relate

I can't believe I survived a whole book with her showing up like only two times

IT'S FINE, I'M MOVING ON, I PROMISE

pash gets angry at nona because she made a radio call to coronabeer and nona says it was a pretend call

I KNEW THEY WERE GONNA FALL FOR THAT

I KNEW IT, I SAID IT HERE

angel teacher is like "that's the crown you always talk about?"

how many crowns do you think there are here, angel teacher?

is it a common name?

pash tells her "you just called wipe protocol on the fucking Lyctor project"

none of this is planned at all and we suffer is gonna be killed by high blood pressure with these people

angel teacher tries to stop whatever thing she unleashed and calls herself "the messenger"

not easy to stop people once you tell them to shoot freely

whatever merv wing is, I don't think they're stopping

angel teacher accepts camilla's help and says "I did call for you to be shot, though"

camilla says "No problem. So long as I can let out some deferred aggression"

nona is asked to go to the kitchen but she chooses to stay by camilla instead

when asked what she really wants to do, though, nona says she wants to find sriracha girlie

camilla is hesitant, because sriracha girlie saw something

I'm hearing alarms in my head at this, but nona, of course, is not

we're gonna regret this

pash thinks she can order camilla around and camilla is kind of like "I don't understand you very local jargon, so whatever"

not in those exact words

nona takes some time to think that pash is pretty, that her eyes are lovely and that her electric blue hair is cute

nona is easily distracted with people she thinks are pretty

because then she thinks she wants to marry camilla and adopt a dog with her

which, GET IN LINE, NONA

I WAS HERE TWO BOOKS BEFORE YOU

AND WE'RE ADOPTING KEVIN

palmolive has to agree to that too, though

MOVING ON

nona goes to the generator room to find sriracha girlie, who's curled up and has thrown up

she is saying that she made something up, which nona agrees with, even if she doesn't know what it is

I'm sure she didn't make anything up, this is all insane as it is

sriracha girlie happens to have a gun on her person

I'm worried she might have already used it

and she proves me right when she says she remembers shooting nona in the head

nona tries to lie and gaslight her

nona also feels disappointed that she won't see camilla fight

which, I relate, because we've seen her fight and

nona restrains sriracha girlie so she stays there while the whole fight is happening and, once over, angel teacher comes to retrieve them

nona asks about camilla and pash's status and angel teacher says "cuts and scrapes", which checks out with the absolute goddess, icon and legend that is camilla

sriracha girlie, upon reaching the classroom again, realizes she did shoot nona

camilla and pash have a moment in which they say the same thing and look at each other

YOU ALSO GET IN LINE, PASH

sriracha girlie is retreating, though, and I'm thinking this is it with this friendship

nona is embarrassed about sriracha girlie seeing her dead but there's no time to be embarrassed when you're getting shot

"You're out of the gang" says sriracha girlie, before shooting

so, the party is officially off, my friends

the girl who is in a cumple 24/7 has lost her party guests

JOHN 5:1

this part of the bible is when jesus heals someone who can't walk

which is, again, very telling

we find dr reverend emperor john setting a car on fire

he continues narrating his problems with getting people to listen to his ideas and plans and how he wanted them to do something about it

then, him and his team finally veer towards justice league territory and consider it's on them to save the world

P, who I'm assuming is our friend pyrrha, tells him that, in order to get them to do something, they need to scare them

so, in comes a mystery client

they ask dr reverend emperor john boi to make a puppet out of a person so it looks like he's alive

they offer him a lot of money for it, so they all consider it

meanwhile, the government and other suits continue the FTL project and are determined to ship billionares out into space

this is sci fi, nothing like this would ever happen in real life, right?

RIGHT?????

"a's little brother" (alfred?) says "money is one big shared hallucination" and ain't he right af

they all think there's something sus about the whole operation

mercygirl and augustine are in agreement and a united front, which scares everybody

they were probably already fucking

sorry, very rude of me to say, I should be more respectful

they were probably already pre-planning the lyctor orgies

so dr reverend emperor john butt, mercygirl and augustine go to the client's place and turns out the client is actually a country and the puppet is actually a leader

it remains unknown which and who

the country representatives give tons of reasons why dr reverend emperor john should go full on gepetto on this guy, but we all know he always acts like he's thinking about it but does it anyway

I don't think he thought that hard about it at all

so augustine, mercygirl and johnny boi start negotiating with these people and end up getting a couple billion doll hairs and a bomb

I'm sure that'll go great

CHAPTER 19 (THE TOMB!!!!!!)

nona wakes up, has been sleeping on chairs and has her legs and arms tied to them and a radiator

rip to you all, BOE or whoever the hell you are

nona has a tantrum

her third tantrum, she says

apparently, they're bad enough that camilla and pyrrha let her swim in the ocean to calm down, even if it's dangerous

so, nona screams as a warning to everyone that shit's about to get very real very fast

since I don't know where camilla is, I'm good, let her loose

you do you, nona

live your truth

fuck shit up

she breaks herself to escape the ties, one part at a time

there's a moment where she thinks "The plastic ties were good, like Corona had said"

and I was like "corona???????? what about crown???????"

I think it's the first time I read nona call coronabeer "corona" and not "crown"

it's not like nona is super strong but she's resilient, so she can kick shit down with patience and regeneration

I respect that

she sees people with pash's boots and has a moment of intense anger against pash for everything that went down

I mean, lying to sriracha girlie and making friends with her in the first place was on you, but still I don't know where camilla is, so by all means, nona, fuck shit up

they shoot her, as if that did anything, and she perseveres

she chases those who keep on shooting and they scream, running away, which is both fierce and kind of funny

nona screams and that makes the person running from her put their hands over their helmet

they drop a bag over her head and immobilize her so she starts to power down

"Inside the hood she heard her mouth say, savage and distinct and cool despite the trembles: 'Fool. You're killing her.' But she was only talking to herself, after all."

HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE WE KEEPING IN THIS GIRL?

IS THIS A CLOWN CAR?

I'm still rooting for the ice cube barbie theory somewhere in there

BUT HOW MANY SOULS CAN WE KEEP IN ONE PERSON?

JOHN 3:20

"Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."

dream pov (who was referred to as harrow but doesn't sound to be her) says she forgets how to breathe sometimes

girl, same

dr reverend emperor john says they had three stages for their plan: 1) keep talking, 2) throw money, 3) reveal nuke

"We were willing to gamble on being tried at the Haugue just to stop the process. Ready to make a hell of a mess to buy time. Prepared to do anything to keep you going"

we keep talking to this pov as if she was some earth princess idk

"C— kept saying. Pick one. Are we more invested in proving this new plan is bullshit or in saving you? I was like, It's both, how can it not be both. C— was like, It can't be both. Pick one and stick to it. Decide what you give a fuck about"

saving earth princess personification who might or might not be ice cube barbie???? idk

"I found that the problem with being the death man is you stop giving much of a fuck"

girl who is referred to as harrow (but might be earth princess ice cube barbie or whatever) gets spooked about having goosebumps and dr reverend emperor john has to explain its mechanics

this is another thing to note

nobody is taking notes anymore because there's a war, so I'm keeping the notes myself

the authorities doing the project that they all think is sus continue to be sus and offer to choose 200 people for the first wave they're sending off to space

the final frontier

everyone apparently falls for their bs

they then claim they're starting to build the ship they need to send the first wave off

god and lyctor gang realize easily that they're full of shit and none of the stuff they seem to be doing correlates with actual things they should be doing if they were doing what they say they're doing

you get me?

so god and lyctor gang go to the authorities like naive kids and the billionares lie about it

who would have thought billionares lie????

according to him, they keep using the cows against him

that's kind of funny

they decide that, if they treat them like they're a cult, they'll be a cult

not like it already wasn't on its way there, honestly

a slippery slope that turned into a toboggan real fast

so, john god asshat decides to drop the science and start the theater

he starts calling himself a necromancer

*dramatic pause*

that's really interesting, actually

because we start this journey just taking necromancy for granted, it's interesting to see it originating as something science-related and then being named that as a sort of theatrical way to call people's attention

it's interesting to see a journey in which this came to exist that isn't just "necromancy exists in this universe", which would have been totally valid too

but here we see that it's actually something else that was named this way to make it seem more attractive to audiences, which is an interesting level of storytelling

very cool

AND THAT'S IT WITH THIS DAY!!!!! this is a long one, I was gonna do two chapters but then the next two were short enough. As a bonus, here's Dana who was looking at birds while I was reading this part in the backyard.

[markrosewater]

Hey Maro,

RE: SpongeBob

Not sure if you read all the notes so I want to be specific.

I agree with that last asker about the reskinned art but dislike the legendary characters specifically from a color pie perspective. I think it really violates a fundamental part of the color pie to make a characters personality not match their color. The most jarring is probably plankton, since his core motivation is constantly trying to steal a Krabby Patty.

I would have loved mechanically unique designs or reskins that were a better flavor to color/mechanic fit.

Mr krabs similarly should have cared more about treasure (money)

Overall I get the intent of trying to hit (some) creature types, but it just feels a bit hasty to just say crab=crab without a thought of who the character is.

There isn’t a Crab that creates Treasure, so we have three options:

a) match the creature types, but not the color(s) (which is what we did)

b) match the colors of the character, but not the creature types

c) design new cards.

I get why the more enfranchised players might prefer b), but it would go over the head of many less enfranchised players.

Mr. Krabs is a Crab requires much less knowledge than Mr. Krabs is black/red.

[theoutcastrogue]

That said, the D&D 3.5 Paladin was bad. It was badly designed, it had bad rules, and in conjunction with the other notoriously bad rule, alignment, it could cause havoc.

Now personally, I never had ANY problems with it in my tabletop games. I played paladins and loved it, and I loved it when other people played paladins, and it was great. But that's because, collectively as a group, we took ONE look at that terrible rule where the paladin's code of conduct prevents them from associating with Evil characters or "someone who consistently offends her moral code", and immediately went, "that's stupid, we ain't doing that, it would ruin the game".

We also didn't love the concept of alignment as a cosmic force, and didn't care for Usually Evil Goblins and Always Evil anything. And when a class's signature ability fully depends on whether creatures are capital E Evil, well that affects storytelling, doesn't it? But we all saw it the same way, and we were happily able to change it without any disagreements. In the end we had a Paladin… similar to 5e now that I think of it: completely ignore the Code's association clause, tailor the Code to personal stance or a specific Order, Detect only fiends and undead and the like, Smite anything you want, Fall only if you really fuck up, and never presume that just because you haven't Fallen yet everything you've ever done is justified and correct and anyone who disagrees with you is objectively wrong.

Basically, there were 2 options in 3.5. You either houseruled and/or handwaved things, and in matters of alignment interpretations erred on the side of "what makes the game go",

OR, you played with Rules As Written, and filled the forums with questions like "should the paladin fall?" (one such thread per week, conservatively), "we got into a fight over the Paladin, what to do?", "is it Evil to pick pockets? because we have a Paladin in the party", "the Assassin uses poison, shouldn't that offend my moral code?", and shit like that. Just... pointless strife, all the time. Again, never happened to me, but I was appalled to read about it, over and over and over.

People got intense with 3.5 Paladins (both pro and against) because it was BADLY DESIGNED and had BAD RULES. Its mechanics forced narrative choices on the entire table, and the only way to make it frictionless was having a party where no one wishes to explore a character's bad side ever, no one does things that aren't bad but WotC branded Evil™ in this or that splatbook, and everyone magically agrees all the time on "what is right and what is wrong" and "what is Lawful and what is Chaotic", which is simply impossible. The most subjective thing in the world (ethics!) was presented as an objective cosmic force, and how you interpreted it would determine how much damage the Paladin deals in combat, and whether the Paladin could keep associating with the party, and if the Paladin is still a Paladin. And all that in a game, let's not forget, whose basic, fundamental premise is "kill things and take their stuff". I'm sorry, this is tremendously stupid. It's the WORST design.

I know that for some people it worked as written, and good for them, but for the many many people it didn't work, well it's obvious why.

[amalgamationillustration]

Finished design for the Eastern Serix, which I made using the Fundamentals Of Creature Design book. I really recommend picking it up if you want to really challenge yourself on really researching and having several passes at creating fictional creatures and really thinking about how and where it would live, feed, walk/swim/fly, breed, sleep. Really useful stuff to practice and full of great examples and references.

I wanted a tree dwelling hunter, so i tried to combine traits from a Fossa, Emerald Tree Boa, and a created gecko, I also threw in some inspiration from lemurs and frilled lizards.

The Eastern Serix is nocturnal and hunts mice and small birds, it uses its long, bristly tail to suspend its body from branches and releases when it wants to drop onto unsuspecting prey below. It then wraps its tail around them and the bristly fur stands on end and sticks into the prey, holding in place like thousands of tiny needles. It is then able to unhinge its jaw and swallow prey whole. The striped fur along its neck can be extended to form a frill to scare off predators.

[can-of-w0rmz]

My thoughts on Frankenstein can basically be summed up in, “Victor is a dickhead but at least he’s not an incel,” and “The Creature is a dickhead but at least he’s not a rich prick”.

To this day “ermmm Victor/Creature is the innocent guy and (X other character) is the bad guy achtually 🤓☝️” takes make me so fucking mad. THEY BOTH SUCK, AND THEYRE BOTH STILL SYMPATHETIC PROTAGONISTS. THATS THE POINT OF THE FUCKING BOOK😭

Also people who think Victor was the bad guy for refusing to make the Bride and going “huh, maybe making a creature for the sole purpose of suffering and fucking you is really fucked up and not my place at all actually?” legitimately need their fucking heads checked because do you genuinely have zero reading comprehension or life experience??? Can you read a book? Can you understand basic themes and concepts? Are you actually stupid?

Victor is a terrible guy for being self absorbed enough to cheat God and nature itself, creating a being that was never meant to be born and inflicting immense suffering on it by the nature of it existing in a way that fundamentally can not be balanced out — following the Christian influences and background in which the novel was written at the time, Victor is not God, he can’t offer the creature salvation or in any way metaphysically balance out his suffering, so he just introduces him to a life of a living hell by his own design and by the nature of the fact that Victor is just a man, and the Creature himself is terrible because the nihilism inherent to his condition as Victor’s creation turns him into a murderous incel who wants to just further the suffering Victor caused, because if he can’t be happy, nobody should, so he kills every innocent bystander who Victor loved and demands that he makes him a woman like Eve who’s equal to him in suffering, who exists for the sole purpose of being his, who was created to be his.

And Victor says no, because he has actual character development and realises it isn’t his place (also, very likely mirroring his engagement to Elizabeth if you kinda follow the same reading as me that Victor never really loved her romantically and felt forced into the marriage because of his mother), which, shock horror, makes Victor a more likeable protagonist, because again, shockingly, he’s actually a pretty good guy in this one situation making a really good moral decision for once by saying “yeah I’m not going to create a woman whose sole purpose in life is to fuck you and suffer as much as you, also what if she doesn’t want to fuck you???”

Are people allergic to the concept of character development or something?? Are people allergic to multifaceted complex characters?? You feel terrible for the creature because of what Victor has done to him by bringing him into existence, and you feel terrible for Victor because of how doomed he is (in the worst way, it’s not just him suffering, he has to watch everyone he loves being forced to suffer because of him) by his one mistake and how he doesn’t have any way to fix it. A creation with no God, and a Man with the weight of God upon him because of his own mistake. They’re both doomed. That’s why it’s so good, THE BOOK IS A FUCKING TRAGEDY WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT FOR SOME PEOPLE TO GRASP???😭

[cerastes]

Today is Day 9 Of Me Playing Girls' Frontline 2.

Like any other gacha, the start is braindead because they need even the most non-sentient of creatures to be able to clear. This is nothing new, but it really stuck out like a sore thumb in this particular case because this game heavily uses the XCOM formula as its inspiration. For the uninitiated, the original 1994 X-COM: UFO Defense starts incredibly brutal and only gets harder as you advance. The 2012 reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown starts reasonably brutal and scales pretty harshly and always demanding you really, really are learning what your tools can do and what the game mechanics are as you basically fight an asymmetrical Civilization III game against an opponent that 1) outguns you most of the way and 2) fights you with the hatefulness one only reserves for someone that has fucked one's wife. GFL2 starts you off against enemies that require absolutely no tactical acumen whatsoever, that do not use cover, and that deal pitiful amounts of damage even if you yourself don't use cover. This lasts a little too long for comfort but again it's industry standard. Once you get to parts of the game that require sentience, it's fun to see how they've gone about the flow of combat: You're basically pitting your characters with their own special conditions, specialties and passives against many enemies that initially are simple as hell (they just move and shoot) but steadily become more complex and nuanced (enemies that target an area for bombardment at the end of their turn, enemies that can counter in specific circumstance, enemies that trap your enemies with overwatch fire, reaction intereceptions, AoE, etc). The system definitely has potential. I've yet to truly find anything actually challenging that wasn't me fighting enemies 10-20 levels higher than my units, but the fundamentals of cover and risk-reward are there even on-level; if you get shot at completely exposed, you are going to take hefty damage (unless you are rocking a Suomi shield).

The biggest departure from XCOM proper is that there is no accuracy: All attacks will always hit, unless certain abilities outright deny the damage -- like certain enemy Medics that can use the Anesthesia skill to negate one instance of damage -- and the game really favors a more aggressive style for both the player and the enemy through the Stability System: All units have a Stability counter, which decreases by certain amounts depending on the attack received. Once it's depleted, units can only benefit from the most bare and basic defensive effects of cover, which are not very good. Stability Break also may have additional special effects on certain enemies, chiefly bosses, resulting in extra damage taken, reduced attack power, changing forms, losing certain active or passive skills, etc. As a huge fan of systems like this, I Enjoy.

The game is gorgeous looking: The environments are highly detailed, the character models are incredibly well made, the guns are lovingly sculpted. I know the overarching meme is that it's got the best anime girl feet in the industry -- and it's true, they put more love into rendering and modelling these girls' feet, stockings and socks that I've seen parents put into raising their children -- but the model quality is truly overarching, they spared no effort in any obvious area, it's a really gorgeous looking game. The sound design and the music are all fine and have not wowed me in any special way, really, but visually, good lord, the game truly does go hard. Another thing the game does really well is video cutscenes, the action and choreography of actually very decently lengthy cutscenes they show pretty often go very hard, with good explosions, good gunplay, fluid and good looking motions, etc. The animation direction in GFL2 is really, really good, something I wasn't expecting given they've not really delved on this area particularly in previous games. They probably hired a really good studio for this-slash-got themselves some very talented and skilled personnel for it.

The game economy is Post-Mihoyo style: There's a set cast of Max Rarity characters, called Elites in the game's nomenclature, that inhabit a Standard Banner with absolutely fucking horrendous rates. 0.6% chance of rolling anything Max Rarity, 0.3% of an Elite Doll, 0.3% of an Elite Weapon. Besides this, there's the Limited Banners, which is every banner ever, meaning post-launch Elites are all Limited with a Limited Signature Weapon. In other words, shit sucks. The only saving grace is that the game, in thankfully true XCOM fashion, is much less about having Strong Individual Units, and much more about having a team with good synergy, and there's plenty of great non-Elites you'll have plenty of copies of. Gameplaywise, you won't get shafted by not having the Newest Woman With A Broken Kit, which is good. Signature Weapons so far from what I've seen are very nice to have but no functionality is tied to them and no character feels incomplete without their Signature Weapon or without multiples dupes, which is really good practice and a deal breaker for me if it's present. About the only stupidly broken character I can think off right this second is definitely Suomi, who supports so incredibly well that she lets you Not Play XCOM. She's seriously and hilariously busted and futureproofed.

The writing is pretty damn stiff. This is nothing new with Sunborn. The thing with Sunborn is that when it hits highs, they are VERY high, but the trip to those highs is clunky and stiff, with an overabundance of nothingburger technobabble and tacticool filler dialogue that, were this a megahit the way One Piece is, would definitely inspire a dogged group of fans to make a website that tells you exactly where to read and where to skip to avoid all the meaningless filler. Even if you like some tacticool, it's just SO much of it that serves no purpose. The characters are... Unfortunately, not super fun. Our old friend Oats, ahem, Groza (OTs-14) is there, and she's fun, but the rest of the characters have not done a good job to endear me to them: Colphne I'm pretty ok with, Nemesis and Krolik really have exhausted the fucks I can give for them by this point (I'm in Chapter 4). This is particularly painful in the case of Nemesis for me, a character whose design I really, really love and who I was looking forward to a lot. Nemesis' whole thing is that she literally cannot speak normally and has to communicate entirely in cryptic theater kid ramblings, and Krolik conversely only exists as the only person that can somehow accurately decipher what the fuck it is she's saying. This is charming for all of three cutscenes before it becomes very old and basically filler: Nemesis says "The embers of starlight long forgotten by statues lingers in the fingertips of the deaf" and Krolik replies with "Hah!? Who are you calling a coward?! I'll beat you up!" because Nemesis shittalks Krolik a lot, and that's the crux of both of their personalities. I know they are building Nemesis for something else but good lord it's torturous and stale. There's a Super Powered Child that I don't care about and she's the main plot device. Mayling is funny and endearing, and I like her. We meet characters from Ye Olde GFL 1 days and so far it's been pretty nice every time: Suomi, Lenna (UMP9), Kalina, Leva (UMP45), always a good time hanging with them. I particularly enjoy how divorced Commander and Kalina are. Oh, the Commander (your character) is an actual character, fully voiced and all, I like that a lot, and I like them. You can choose a male or female Commander, with fully 3D rendered distinct non-obscured, non-masked models and that's pretty damn cool. Still, can't help but miss the bangers that were ST AR-15, RO635, DEFY, and others from GFL1.

There's plenty of stuff to do without using Stamina, especially event stuff, but I fear that once you run out of it, you enter that weird limbo of "logging in, autoclearing the RNG drops mode, logging out". I'm not there yet but I dread reaching it. I know they just launched the game here (1 year old in CN) but, I guess I've been immensely spoiled by Arknights' several replayable game modes, this game, being XCOM in nature, would ROCK a roguelite mode or some sort of replayable game mode so much.

Overall, it's been a pretty nice time, as someone who dropped but nonetheless greatly enjoyed GFL, it's great seeing the Old Friends better than ever. My friend Suomi and my friend Tololo (CHILE MENTIONED 🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱) are there for me and I'm glad to hang out with them again. I wish my friend Sabrina would also join me sooner than later :'). Color me surprised that so far, the gameplay seems both fun and has potential, but we'll see how it goes from here. Overall: Good first impression.

Say something nice about my friend Tololo

[alexriesart]

Hi! I’m an art student trying to get a foothold into creature design. I’ve read the book “Fundamentals of Creature Design” that you featured in, and I love your concept work. What were the resources that you used to start learning animal anatomy?

I recommend buying slightly out of date Invertebrate Anatomy and illustrated books on early prehistoric life. Slightly out of date texts are WAY cheaper and the illustrations are just as good.

[dailyadventureprompts]

So I don't usually get involved in class balance discourse but recently I stumbled across this video and it made me realize something about D&D's game design, specifically WHY casters get access to room/encounter clearing amounts of damage while martial characters are stuck with their low damage iterative attacks.

See, since d&d was one of the first things to emerge from the primordial soup of ttrpgs there were a lot of developments in game design that we take for granted today that simply didn't exist as concepts back then. One of these was asymetricality: the idea that different players at the table might be using their own set of mechanics to interact with the game at different levels.

Today we understand that while our DMs/GMs/Storytellers/Directors are fellow players, the game is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT from their perspective and the mechanics they have access to should probably reflect that.

I've complained before that d&d's monster making system is nigh unusable because it expects you to do a lot of extraneous work for a creature that's going to be dead in three rounds. This is because the game has traditionally modelled monsters in nearly the same way that it models player characters, which seems like the most backwards bit of game design ever until you remember that d&d evolved from wargames, where having a unified system with clearly defined math was important for maintaining competitive balance.

Magic is unbalanced for the same reason that monsters are over-complicated, because it expects the party and the dungeonmaster to be using the same mechanics despite their fundamentally different play experiences.

Think about it: however much fun it is to make things explode Fireball and it's big brother Meteor Swarm are not well designed player spells. They're really USEFUL for a DM looking to deal a lot of damage to a relevant level party, but encounter balance starts to go out the window once the players get their hands on them.

So how do we fix this? Honestly, not sure. I'm really interested in how the 5e successors are taking advantage of the asymmetrical nature of the GM/Player dynamic, as everyone's seemed to have independently learned the lesson that there should probably be a different set of mechanics depending on whether you're behind the screen or not.

For D&D itself though, I think it's one of those things that I'm going to need to tinker with for a while and up my game design skill. Learning where the game breaks down teaches us how to improve it. Currently I'm experimenting with retooling player HP and making counter-magic a LOT more common to make the use of those big encounter-ending spells more tactical. I might also take a look into it if I ever feel like tangling with the spell economy.