#games you play by text

[fantasyfantasygames]

Between the Lines

Between the Lines: In Plain Sight, Hidden Games, 2015

There are about a dozen games and supplements named "Between the Lines". This one can be discerned from the others in several ways. First, its form factor: a mass-market paperback. Second, its cover: a fairly generic romance photo that also looks like it secretly wants to be a spy thriller. Third, it's designed to be played in public without anyone noticing.

Between the Lines (BTL) is a conspiracy game. The conceit is that anyone you meet might be part of one of several world-ruling cabals. Your particular cabal is the one trying to dethrone all the others, but in true Paranoia style, your cabal has also been infiltrated by all the other cabals. You're all trying to arrange matters so that each others' secret societies lose and yours wins.

Stats in BTL are all about subtlety and influence. You have Resources, which indicate your pull in various arenas, like Finance, Entertainment, Politics, and Law Enforcement. Those get spent and traded. Then you have Abilities, like Perception, Fast-talk, Sleight of Hand.

You can play in LARP mode, where everyone you see reading the book can be assumed to be playing. You're trading resources and information with one another, and potentially misleading or even poisoning each other. Or, you can play in a more standard style with 3-5 players and a GM.

"Play in public" mechanics are always more awkward than you'd like. There are only so many games of rock-paper-scissors you can play and so many weird euphemisms you can drop before someone nearby realizes things are weird. BTL has an advantage in that everyone has a smartphone, and 3-4 people on a bus staring at their phones are no longer considered weird. When you need to make a check, you click "Random Article" on Wikipedia, then text the link to the other players or the GM. Get an article that's clearly perfect for the situation and it's a critical hit. Otherwise you add your stats to the number of words in the title, with a "win by less than 4" mechanic that means you can't just send a link to the longest-named article in an attempt to win.

The GM advice section describes how to play, and how to teach play, but not how to set up plots or conspiracies. You're more or less on your own when it comes to creating opponents and workable storylines.

Copies of BTL would normally have been found in the RPG section in big-chain bookstores. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line someone assumed it had been misfiled, and it didn't exactly sell well as a romance novel. Most of it was returned to the printer, and most of what returned was pulped. About 90% of the remaining copies lack covers.

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[my-fool]

I dont get people who write a Wyll that gets nervous and an Astarion who doesn't. Wyll gets tortured in front of the group and still doesn't miss a beat, aside from if you let his father die, I think there's only one or two lines where his dialogue strays from "affable/charming". Good luck trying to get through that shell, lol. Meanwhile Astarion has dozens of shrill, nervous, panicked dialogue lines. Astarion is a character who is influenced strongly by player choice and never goes it alone whereas Wyll leaves the camp if you fuck him around too much.

I feel like if you make Astarion cool and suave you are falling for the façade that is supposed to be deconstructed by the viewer and if you make Wyll fumbling, naïve and nervous you are forgetting that this man has been locked in a 24/7 one-on-one psycho-sexual mental battle with a billion-year-old demon from the 9th circle of Hell for the entirety of his adult life at this point, so. Jot that down.

[wanderingibon]

actually baffled that I've never drawn my favorite character(s) of all time on here so I had to remedy that immediately!!! ft. crow & glint

[shrimpricebowl]

oh thank god

[dragonpyre]

Psych au where Shawn Spencer comes clean at the end of the pilot like “haha that was fun. But seriously guys I’m just good at spotting things. I’m not actually psychic” but no one believes him.

[ganondoodle]

(totk rewritten)

finally, all the arm and spirit abilities- for the first half of the game (rauru) and for the second half with the shiekah arm replacing links arms instead and the spirit abilities gained through ganondorf

(please excuse my handwriting and sometimes repeated info on the first two, i lost motivation/patience at the end and couldnt get myself to basically redo it all from scratch just to make it a bit more cleaner)

note, the camera rune is unconnected to the arm, its the shiekah stone copy link has (zelda carries the one from botw, a copy was attempted to be made for link but it lacks all runes except the camera, the map and its teleportation, and journal/archive)

note for the heal effects of some spirit abilities- im also reworking the healing system, making it more like the older games, so healing isnt as easy and much more restricted, thus making those effects of spirit abilities more valuable ( lil potion icon on the d pad will act a little bit like in skyward sword, opens your limited selection of healing items and if chosen link switches to holding it and letting you consume it with -a- while walking around in real time- to avoid more pausing and mass healing on regular items while in menu)

additional note, the automatic recharging of the magic meter depending on the environment gives you a reliable but less abusable way of using abilities and allows for even more creative dungeon/challenge design by using it effectively- it works by absorbing magic from its surroundings, so if its an area with little magic it recharges slower, if its a very spiritual or healthy place it will recharge faster, it can be used to make things more challenging and also as subtle storytelling (example, theres a graveyard with the magic energy around being off the charts, even if there are no spirits to see, it could hint at the people buried not having died peacefully, no matter what their gravestone says...)

the usage of magic and how much the different abilities cost also allows for a much more dynamic fighting style for players to choose and try out, balancing them all out with their cost instead of a fixed timer, and the recharging beign affected by the environment perhaps forcing players that favor high cost magic abilities to use the lower cost ones for example, or not being able to charge one up bc the enemy is too fast and doesnt give you enough time to charge it

about half of the small overworld dungeons (not shrines) are also locked/inaccessible for the first half and new quests appear as the second half commences- together with the additional changes raurus return brings with it (sonau buildings, enemies being mostly cosntructs that he summoned etc) and whole set of new abilities giving you a fresh new way to play while (hopefully) not making you feel too restricted for the first half

... making these detailed concepts took me longer than id like to admit q-q

[anemonet]

[Outtake from iterator Prosperity of Populace final speach to her citizen before its disassembly.]

[shadowaj]

SYSTEMATIC WORLD KILLING ME

[eregar]

still thinking about how, as andreas ages, the art we see from him becomes less technically proficient but far more earnest. his figures are more abstracted, his scene work highly simplified, but there’s a dynamism and directness of emotion that's ultimately far more memorable than his more academic works. it completely disrupts the idea that maturing in your art must mean steady increase in technical proficiency and instead suggests that maybe maturing in your art means becoming more comfortable with what you have to say rather than fixating on the skill in how you say it.

[gobstoppr]

Tetris Fanart.

I've been playing tetris while listening to horror podcasts. and yeah

[rationalnerd62]

As someone who has spent a year and half watching C1/C2/C3, is now finally caught up, and as a result is finally allowing myself to look at fandom reactions to episodes... Boy, critical role discourse is weird.

People will spend days arguing about who's evil and who isn't, which decisions made sense and which ones did not, whether the plot point is solid or not, what's the consequences of that fake action in that fake world, who's a psychopath and who isn't, which group is better than the other, etc etc etc.

Meanwhile I'm there enjoying every single episode of that show. For ten years, this group of friends has met every week to roll some dice. They've created characters that made them laugh, and cry, and smile, and frown, and shout, in excitement, fury, terror and joy. Through them, they've lived adventures, drama, tension, trauma, in a sandbox world they'll never put a foot in. They've created wonders in Exandria, then destroyed them just to see what would happen (shout out to Emon and the Chroma Conclave arc 🎉).

Their world had mystical artifacts, so they created lost civilisations to justify both their existence and rarity. It had Gods, so they gave them backstories and myths, to make this world feel real. They understood that history in itself is flawed, so the knowledge of the past is changing. Each campaign, they went on bigger questions, bigger challenges. From very early on, Campaign 3 has been questioning the status quo between Gods and Mortals, and what we know of the deities has evolved as a result. Why should I care, really, whether Bell's Hells are right or not to challenge the Gods. It's obviously a storyline that Matt and the rest of the cast were curious to explore, so they're doing it. Maybe it'll work out great, maybe it won't, they don't know, and that's fine. After all, what is the point of a sandbox world if you cannot push a few red buttons.

And of course, not every plot point or decision is going to be resilient to scrutiny. It's an improvised ttrpg game, with 100+ episodes per campaign, and we're almost at 500h in length for C3. Yesterday, in my ttrpg, I forgot who my new vice purveyor was, after I overindulged a few months ago (... It's a Blade in the Dark thing). Last week, I invented a drag persona for my character because I was trying to find a distraction and I panicked. Ttrpg are soooo random, mate. Even with professional players like the Critical Role folks, it stays a ttrpg. Things get forgotten. Some things get developed and others don't get the time to. Discussions happen, and sometimes they happen again six months later because maybe characters have changed or maybe not. It's not a scripted TV show, where things can be planned in advance and you know the characters will stick to the script. Inconsistencies will happen, and that's fine.

(Contrary to my ttrpg though, the CR folks are absolutely mind-blowing improv actors and watching them every week stays absolutely thrilling to me. Some of the things you all have apparently fought a long time about are some of my favorite moments, in any of the campaigns. See swordgate, a masterpiece of dramatic improv and bonkers choices. Those players are *not here* to stay safe, they want to feel the highest highs and the lowest lows and I am there for it 🥺.)

[beearcheops]

project eden's garden memes/screenshots cuz I finished watching ch 1

bonus screenshot that I forgot

[gothwizardmagic]

oh yeah i finished sacred and terrible air and i regret to announce that the distressingly erotic autopsy scene in disco elysium was not an isolated incident

[dragondawdles]

art about art about art

[javierduffy]

replaying this game after the second game is making me honest to god so beyond miserable … javier looks so absolutely defeated here. it’s genuinely breaking my heart. please don’t make me think about the thoughts he’s having now- perhaps ones of regrets, or flashes of laughter and singing around the campfire, of clanking beer bottles together and sharing stories, of looking at the shine in dutch’s eyes during a speech and how he felt, somehow, the warmth of the mexican sun. and how that sun never felt the same when he got home again. and how the only time in the past eight years that he ever felt warm was when john’s hands wrapped the rope around his hands and legs. when john’s rope was the noose around his neck, and he finally, finally could stop running. guilt, fear, regret … relief. please kill me im so sad