#just solely watching ttrpgs

[imogens-temult]

started watching the abridged episodes of critical role c3 to finally get to watch a campaign from the beginning without feeling too overwhelmed bc of the amount asdkljfhasd i'm like 6 eps in and having a great time. still sad there's no c2 abridged bc that's the campaign i soooo badly wanna watch but there's so much idk idk maybe one day!!!

[rottenshotgungames]

No more waiting, let’s talk about what y’all are here to see

Footfall Devlog 4

This Devlog will be covering the basics of what Footfall is and the challenges of making a game so heavily inspired by immersive sims.

So, without further ado:

What is Footfall?

Footfall is an occult-industrial stealth-action rpg inspired by Dishonored and Mistborn. It aims to emulate the systemic ecosystem and emergent gameplay of immersive sims, particularly the fast, creative, movement-centric gameplay of Dishonored.

If this sounds interesting to you, the free playtest is live! You can find it on itch at https://rotten-shotgun-games.itch.io/footfall-playtest

Genre Convention

If you’re interested in Footfall I assume that you’ve played stealth-action games before: Dishonored, Assassin’s Creed, Gloomwood, Sekiro, Metro, etc. If you have, you know that there are generally two categories of stealth mechanics present in any given game

Player tools & indicators (e.g. Thief’s light gem, Dishonored’s stealth kills)

Enemy AI (e.g. The xenomorph in ALIEN: Isolation changing up their search patterns based upon your actions)

These two categories are mostly separated by longevity. Player tools and indicators focus very much on short term actions and consequences that influence the long term consequences of the enemy AI—I’m including the state of unconsciousness or death as a “long term consequence.” Because the first category tends to (mechanically) impact the second more than vice versa—and because this would be a VERY long essay if I talked about both in detail—we’re gonna be covering the player side of stealth today.

The Indicators

An Indicator in a stealth game informs the player when they’ve been spotted and/or how close they are to being spotted. Some stealth games have a few Indicators that track or reveal different things (e.g. The three lightning bolts in Dishonored tell you how aware a certain enemy is toward your presence and location, and the upgraded Dark Vision lets you see enemy Vision Cones, and guards will yelp and say things when they see a body you left behind. All three of these are Indicators). There are two general categories that Indicators fall into:

Hard Indicators—distinct visual trackers, particularly a UI element (e.g. the motion tracker in ALIEN: Isolation).

Soft Indicators—Narrative elements that convey information in a manner that is less precise than Hard Indicators (e.g. the sound made by your actions in AMNESIA: The Bunker).

While most videogames with a stealth mechanic incorporate both kinds of Indicator to some extent, TTRPGs are a bit different. The more tactical subset of this medium often attempts to provide player characters with a plethora of options for solving problems and overcoming tasks, among these being stealth—but almost every one of these games uses solely Soft Indicators. What do I mean by this? Well, think about D&D 5e’s stealth: D&D has no facing rules, no rising gauge of enemy awareness—hell the only semi-Hard indicator is light level, but that’s pointless because of the non-rarity of Dark Vision. There’s exactly two TTRPGs that I can think of which contain Hard Indicators, that being Blades in The Dark and Black Seven (both of which are really cool) but their indicators are both more long-term and therefore fall into my arbitrarily designated Enemy AI portion of stealth mechanics.

Hard Indicators are crucial to giving the player a sense of control in a stealth game, watching the numbers go up and down in direct response to your actions is the foundation of the experience (and just failing one Stealth check as a transition into full-blown combat discourages wide-spread use of stealth anyway). I decided to include two major Hard Indicators in Footfall:

Facing. This one was a no-brainer, Footfall already has a physics engine that would massively benefit from facing rules, it’s no huge leap to describe how your facing impacts your Line of Sight.

Notice. Notice is a riff on the classic stealth tracker (e.g. Dishonored’s lightning bolts, Gloomwood’s huntsman eye colors) that measures how aware nearby enemies are to your presence and actions, combined with the player-centric elements of THIEF’s light gem. This has led to a more generalized resource, measuring the awareness of all nearby enemies, influenced almost entirely by the individual player’s actions. It ranges from 0 (unnoticed) to 3 (spotted).

A consistent question I’ve gotten asked is, “Why did you make Notice a player resource, rather than something tracked by individual enemies?” Firstly, tracking that kind of resource on an enemy-by-enemy basis is hellish for a GM. Secondly, and possibly even more importantly, making Notice a player resource makes it feel like they have control over their own ability to stay hidden. If it’s a number ticking up and down on their character sheet, then it’s something they’ll pay more attention to and attempt to exercise control over/capitalize upon more readily . . . so long as they have the tools to do so, of course.

Tools

There are, generally speaking, two types of stealth-interactive tools:

Maintaining tools

Capitalizing tools

Maintaining tools help you to maintain or regain your hidden status. Think the lockers in Outcast or crouching in everything. These tools make stealth feel interactive and . . . well, functional. If you don’t have the basic ability to hide, how are you supposed to engage with stealth gameplay? The balancing act with Maintaining tools is in making them strong enough that Stealth feels viable, but not so powerful that the game becomes too easy or other options are immediately discarded. These take quite a few forms in Footfall, the most basic being Line of Sight and environmental interactions (e.g. Cover, Hidden Terrain, Darkness) that prevent you from needing to make a Stealth check or slowly reduce Notice over time. Some Gifted powers are also categorized as maintaining tools, particularly the base powers of Passage, Possession, and Shadows.

Capitalizing tools allow you to take advantage of your hidden status. The most common example is the Stealth kill/knock out. Capitalizing tools make stealth feel worth it, they’re a reward for engaging in this style of gameplay. In Footfall the only explicit Capitalizing Tool is the Coup de Grace, an enhanced Attack that’s far more likely to kill/knock out your opponent in one blow; however there are a million-and-one other reasons to maintain stealth, such as the danger of direct combat, the increased freedom of power usage, the penalties from Enemy Awareness, and the Downtime penalties from killing people (some of this will be covered in the next Devlog).

This brings us around to an underrated topic when discussing Stealth TTRPGs:

Centralization

We can talk all we want about the conventions of the Stealth genre, about the specific implementations of common mechanics and mechanical types, but it’ll only ever be useful insofar that such mechanical theory informs how players interact with the game.

The end-goal here is centralization. Your stealth mechanics, where they do exist, need to impact and influence every part of rules and play. Even if your players aren’t engaged in Stealth, that decision needs to be put in context of and conversation with Stealth gameplay.

If I’m not constantly thinking about the light I’m in and the sound I’m making, I’m not playing Thief.

If I’m not constantly working to get to higher ground and hidden terrain so that I can ambush enemies, I’m not playing Assassin’s Creed.

If I’m not thinking in relation to Stealth, I’m not playing a Stealth game.

Self Promo

Hey y’all, sorry about the long wait on this one. The playtest is finally public, and we’re halfway through talking about stealth! The next devlog is gonna be about Enemies, which are a whole can of worms.

If you wanna check out my other games, and get updated when major changes come to the Footfall playtest, follow me on Itch! If you're just looking for more Footfall status updates, or want to have an impact on the design, you can always join my public Discord. If you want more devlogs, and more rpg design talk, follow me here or on twitter.

Have a great night and a great day.

[utilitycaster]

queueing this on purpose as it's about no one single incident, but the (finally) slowly dissipating looming specter of Campaign 1 stereotypes/discourse has always been weird to me because I have only ever experienced the backlash.

I completely understand, and have even seen the older comments proving it was the case, that it was common during Campaign 1 that people would send death threats to Marisha for breathing; and that because Vax was clearly portrayed as bi and having mental illness, and to a lesser but not complete extent that Percy was 1. played by a bi man and 2. was more complex than Punisher sticker you can put on your pickup truck, that bro-y types would latch on to Travis and Sam as the REAL MEN who HAVE MANLY CHARACTERS. But coming in with Campaign 2, with my main fandom home being Tumblr, I've mostly experienced the (fortunately, significantly toned down) opposite. And as someone who likes all these players but has had actual, textual criticisms of Beau or Laudna (or even just...doesn't think they are perfect and the leader and the best), and who vibes heavily with what Travis does and finds a lot to enjoy about Sam's characters even when they frustrate me I feel half the time the arguments I get are directed not at me but with some guy who actually quit watching five years ago.

Like, I'm not saying "dumbass DM's girlfriend can't play a druid," I'm talking about an entirely different character who happens to be played by the same actor and saying "I feel this character was created with a particularly heavy focus on aesthetics, and the mechanics and backstory do not always cohere as a result." I also find myself in the weird position of preferring the more "serious" Campaign 1 characters of Vex, Percy, Keyleth, and Vax, but finding a lot to appreciate in Grog and Scanlan and Tary that often gets pushed aside in order to paint them as either nothing more than goofy comic relief or as an exercise in selfishness, when they're not ignoring them entirely; and worse, find that people will treat Fjord and Veth like Grog and Scanlan despite that being an entirely false comparison.

I've also mentioned that I feel this in online d&d spaces too - like, I fully believe there was a time once when the contempt was reserved for the tiefling druids and changeling bards and REAL PLAYERS play a dwarf fighter on a quest for revenge, but that just fully flipped, and now you have players who sound like absolute nightmares claiming moral superiority solely because they play a firbolg with a mohawk who acts at all times like they'd rather be in Monsterhearts than a D&D campaign, instead of one of those cringey human fighters. Just, in general, it feels like the middle ground in a lot of actual play and TTRPG discussions is lost because half the people I talk to are still carrying on half of an argument they once had in 2016.

[ladyshinga]

People complaining about characters getting happy endings already annoys me, but it EXTRA annoys me for role-playing games. MFer, if the player wants a gd happy ending for THEIR OWN CHARACTER then they’re allowed that. TTRPGs are not going to have the perfect story structure that you can expect when you, say, read a story by a singular author controlling the whole narrative. You’re gonna get messy storytelling with endings driven by the DIRECT desires of those PLAYING and EMBODYING those characters. It is such a specific type of storytelling that people whining about endings just baffles me - the endings weren’t for YOU. Not solely, anyway - YOU were secondary. The PRIMARY goal of the endings was to  make the PLAYERS happy, and whoever watches it later? They’re allowed to feel however they want, but acting like TTRPG character endings NEED to be thematically appropriate or have a “lesson” with it or wrap things up in a way a fan wants is... a TALL order. If you want structured narratives you need to go back to books and movies and TV because a live game is not gonna be the thing for you, especially in the world we live in today where a fuckton of players are, say, facing fascism in their everyday lives with the world on fucking fire and maybe they need that happy ending in their gameplay to make the play itself worth it. Write your own tragic endings, don’t whine that others don’t want it for themselves

[cloudjumpervalka]

really surprised i haven't posted these?

the first is a lineup of my apprentice for the arcana game in their various outfits. they have since become a big inspiration for my new book project

the second is a lineup of all my ttrpg characters over the years. more info about them below (this is so long i apologize but i love my blorbos)

Dagny - half wood elf druid. he lives alone in a swamp after running away from home. he doesn't much care for people after growing up in a toxic environment. he dedicates himself to preserving the wildlife he's found solace in. Notably has a pet seagull named Gordon and a coral snake named Alton

Beryl Frozenfire (ft. Sapphire Frozenfire) - mountain dwarf barbarian. beryl and sapphire grew up as siblings born into a wealthy mining family (all of their family is named after blue gemstones) beryl grew up more interested in fighting to protect her home while sapphire grew up interested in becoming a powerful wizard. they grew up as the best of friends but long story short, beryl accidentally kills sapphire during a raid on her family's mine. beryl leaves her family home to atone for this, only to return years later with her new traveling party against her wishes. while saving her family's mine which had fell apart after the disappearance of their two children, she finds herself now magically attached to an ax holding the angry soul of her dead sister.

Morgana Thales - dusk elf death cleric. (yes i used Mor for a like month long side campaign i dont remember the exact details but bear with me) morgana loses her wife in a raid against their village. she then makes a deal with the followers of (i dont remember the deity oops but i think?? it was Shar?) to resurrect her wife in exchange of her service

Jullian - fey eladrin bard. he plays the hurdy gurdy. he's a traveling musician that relies on his constant traveling to refrain from forming any good relationships. (and honestly i've tried playing him in two different campaigns but i just can't rp as him lmao so me leaving those campaigns early is very in character actually)

Nanjo - human... doomed superhero... "vape ghost". she was born with powers that allow her to turn her body into vapor to "teleport" (similar to reaper/moira ovw) however every time that she uses her powers, she loses a part of her physical body. she currently does not have either of her arms intact, instead she moves her hands around with clouds of vapor she forms to create "smoky arms". she does not want people to know she is essentially disintegrating for multiple reasons. but the main reason is she is a retired jpop idol. it was too hard to keep her secret on stage so she left her other two group members to be a duo. while she cannot continue performing on stage, she uses her abilities in a modified cosplay of her favorite idol to fight crime

Olive Alberich - android on the run from being disassembled. she was built as a product of a corrupt company. she was purchased by a wealthy family that used her to act as a nanny for their child. she acted essentially as the kid's sole caretaker as well as her homeschool teacher as she had infinite knowledge in her head. one day the kid asks to do a science experiment as her homework for the day, but things go wrong and results in the kid dying from a explosion/fire that burns down that wing of the mansion. this event triggers an empathy chip in olive's brain that was not meant to be installed. olive distraught in that moment can recall her years raising this kid in new light while watching her body burn. her owners after seeing olive's new attitude, call for her recall as they believe she intentionally killed their child. she believes this is unjust and is now on the run. she has since acquired a new "cool girl" look by cutting her hair, changing her wardrobe, and replacing one of her eyes. if anyone asks, she's human

the last one is cheating because its beryl again but from when i tried bringing her back for a new campaign that was abandoned quickly lol

[teecupangel]

I guess this would be a modern-day AU where Assassin's Creed Protagonists play Blades in the Dark?

(EDIT 12/10: Now with Part 2 )

GM: Haytham (he regrets it sooo much)

Altaïr: Lurk

Haytham: "Altaïr, I'm begging you, please stop trying to do an American accent"

Ezio: Slide

Haytham: "Are you saying that you slept with this 70 year old woman?"

Ezio: "Yes."

Haytham: "I will not ask you to explain how for the sake of my sanity. Just take your extra dice."

Connor: Cutter

Connor: "My character loves his mother."

Haytham: "..."

Connor: "And is searching for his father so he may kill him."

Haytham: "... Thank you for that interesting backstory... son."

Desmond: Whisper

Desmond: "I guess I'll compel the ghost to possess him and get the ghost to make him jump off the tower."

Haytham: "You want to compel the ghost... to possess the head of the Blue Coats and jump to his death?"

Desmond: "Yup."

Haytham: "(sigh) Roll for attune. I'm telling you now that you are in a desperate posi-"

Desmond: (rolls 2 sixes and grins at Haytham)

Haytham: "......... (siiiggghhh) you attuned perfectly and the ghost is more than happy to possess the head of the Blue Coats and jump off the tower for you."

(these two sometimes join them)

Leonardo: Leech

Haytham: "Just a reminder, Leo, you still have a long-term project that you may want to continue?"

Leonardo: "Oh, yes, please!"

Desmond: "What was your long-term project again?"

Leonardo: "Creating a moving corpse using spark-craft."

Desmond: "Ohhhh, is that where all our corpses go?"

Malik: Spider

Malik: "I will assist Altaïr in this prowl and use my special skill Foresight to not take any stress."

Haytham: "Alright, how are you going to assist him?"

Malik: "I will tell him the exact timing and route to take."

Altaïr: "I ignore all of his instructions."

Haytham: "....... Alright, Altaïr, roll with only 2 dice. Malik, take 1 stress for having to watch Altaïr ignore everything you've just said."

Malik: "I'll take 2."

Desmond: "Oh my god. Guys, stop sabotaging each other."

Actual Player sheets and Crew Sheet (Assassin Playbook below)

Altaïr's Player sheet (starting)

Ezio's Player sheet (starting)

Connor's Player sheet (starting)

Desmond's Player sheet (starting)

Their Crew Sheet: Assassin Brotherhood

Bonus:

Leonardo's Player sheet (starting)

Malik's Player sheet (starting)

Other notes:

After their first session, Haytham wonders if his son should be friends with these three

Altaïr tries to be stealthy af, his dice have a 50/50 chance of agreeing with him

Most of the time if Altaïr fails, the consequence is that someone will start chasing him or their target will start running and he'll have to chase them (this is now a reoccurring joke and they're thinking Altaïr is cursed)

Ezio uses the Flashback mechanics the most to use his special skill (3 sessions in and everyone has agreed that Ezio has slept with everyone)

Connor doesn't hate his father, he thinks it'll be funny though to act like he does ingame

Desmond has played before, his dad is a longtime TTRPG player and he taught Desmond everything he knows (but he doesn't tell anyone that)

Haytham knows though and he rubs it in Bill's face that his own son prefers Haytham to be his GM

Malik made his character sheet for the sole purpose of helping everyone, he regrets it 10 minutes into his first score

Nowadays, whenever he joins, Malik just acts like an allied freelancer who only comes in when he has no other choice

Leonardo can't play regularly because he's usually busy but Haytham keeps a note that will tell him how many cooldowns Leonardo has so he can keep working on his long-term projects

Everyone agrees to take as many corpses as they can (if possible) for Leonardo's projects

[verminfang]

So ‘Weaverdice’ (as shorthand for ttrpg in wormverse but actually its an excuse for friend to teach me and coplayer Fate in a setting we like and understand) PC trigger and powerset and the struggles with figuring out a Cape name for them because we’re going: Design a trigger and then base power off that first rather than just making the character which lets you go name/theme first,

Trigger, mostly riffing on the fact that thanks to Weaver talking to those kids Dnd is canon to wormverse and starting with a joke about making someone whose trigger is just being That Guy in every r/rpghorrorstories before actually focusing down on something:

Socially isolated neurodivergent teen finds their first friends and sense of belonging in an online TTRPG group and becomes heavily heavily invested in it. Spending a lot of their money on commissions of art for their and the tables characters, books for the game master etc, an irresponsible amount of money that places strain on their home life. They ignore this so wrapped up in their investment in the game, the feeling of friendship and community, even figuring out their gender identity in roleplaying in this game. When the campaign ends they volunteer as the next GM further ruining their finances gathering art and extensions for it, ruining their education and losing their job spending far too much time planning the campaign and alienating what few connections they had outside their game group.

Barely more than a few sessions into the campaign their online group ghosts them completely and they can't get into contact with them.  Floundering for reasons and only just coming to terms with what remains of their living situation without the group to draw their focus they eventually find their answer to what happened trawling a gaming horror stories forum where they recognize a story as being about them and track it to a whole saga of posts about how that group couldn't stand them but found it too awkward to kick them with how much money they were spending, they'd barely tolerated them as a player but them running the game had been the last straw.

They trigger going over post after post watching people agree with their group, taking in what they'd never realized their 'friends' had felt about them in the ruins of what they had been left with after investing so much of themself into those false friendships.

Rating: Master (loss of the group and social isolation- specifically a master that works with a Group)/Thinker (Sudden realization/missing information) Themes: Over Investment-both financially and of the self, Fantasy- the world of the TTRPG and illusions they had about the group and their friendship So after working out that the thinker aspect would be Scan Thinker

The power they ended up with was this:

Master 4, Thinker 2.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Cape can tear sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose and tongue) from her face with ease and without any loss of blood in the aftermath though the wound left is still grisly. Upon leaving their hand the sensory organ grows into a squat simian master minion something between ape and human in appearance with pallid skin and coarse body hair, including a beard, with an exaggerated version of the organ it was grown from.

These 'dwarfs’ are roughly as strong as a chimpanzee, stealthy and adept at climbing with their sole sense an enhanced version of the sense from the organ they are grown from (sight, hearing, smell or taste) that is shared by the Cape who is incapable of sensing from the removed organ except through that minion. Any damage done to the exaggerated sensory organ is felt by the Cape and isn't healed upon being regained though with the returning to less exaggerated size any wounds are similarly reduced in scale.

The minions are puppeted by the Cape and upon being 'dismissed' melt into a pile of organic waste with the sensory organ reappearing in her face. Snow White can speak through the 'tongue' dwarf but obviously lacks that capability while it is missing.

Power obviously draws on the themes of ‘giving too much of yourself’ (tearing off organs) ‘false friends’ (the minions are non sapient puppets) ‘tunnel vision and missing things’ (literally have to remove their senses and place them somewhere else) the Minion appearance vaguely resembles a dwarf as a generic fantasy humanoid that also has connections to wealth and gold/digging too deep/even more literal tunnel vision

One last detail about the character themself before I get into the Cape Name Struggle is that they’re gender-fluid but not out in their civilian life so they kind of do the Circus thing of presenting male as a civilian and as female as a cape

So current name ideas:

- Snow White (as in, has dwarves, is kind of fairytale and fantasyish which I like but also like, doesn’t super convey the spy/scout body horror aspect of power?)

- Vicarious (very on the nose and doesn’t lend itself too much too a theme, potentially Viscarious as a lame pun on visceral.vicarious but also it feels like a, need to explain it every time thing)

-Sensate (kind of generic for sensory powers but its also like, a faction in 2e dnd planescape which is a funny reference)

If anyone made it through this long ass niche post and has a cool cape name rec I’ll hear em out

[zudz]

MMO thoughts.

About a million years ago, I was reading PVP-online and Jade was telling another character about meeting some player in game at the battle of someplace or another. The details are blurry (and I don't have access to the archive), but the underlying comment stuck with me. It implies a level of dynamic play that ... simply doesn't exist in MMOs. MMOs are largely static playgrounds for player avatars to accumulate power and cool stuff in. You'll never find yourself in a crowd of adventurers assaulting Crushbone Castle while an army of orcs gathers to defend their emperor. They're not programmed to do that, and you only need like 6 people to kill the whole area once you're level ... 12? Maybe 16. It's been a long time since I was in the Faydark.

Anyway, I wanted the reality that Jade sold with that comment. I still do.

Later, I watched some WoW machinima about a guild called Illegal Danish. Over the course of the videos, one of the guild members explains that the guild exists because some royal choked to death on a danish and they were outlawed. So the guild formed to protect the last danish. The Illegal Danish.

This, of course, is also not how MMOs work. Guilds form so you can have chat channels, and work together to kill monsters and take their stuff. I want the world sold by Illegal Danish.

The common trait of both of these situations, besides the fact that they were really just there to facilitate comedy, is they're the kind of thing that might work if an MMO was really a big tabletop RPG. It makes me think of the old "Living" shared campaign world (Living Greyhawk or Living Forgotten Realms). It might work there, or if your D&D game was run by several local GMs who coordinated their world states closely.

That's a lot of work, though. So I guess what I really want is a tool in my next MMO that lets me form better guilds. Let me have a guild with a reason to exist. I'm envisioning a tool like the clue/conclusion wheel from Detective Grimoire. "This guild exists to:" fight/protect/collect/discover/special interaction "the" Goblin clan/bears of surefall/mysterious coins/etc. I'd also like the ability to like... open a map and go "This guild exists for the sole purpose of keeping this specific hill free of snails." or whatever. Just "This is our cause! Won't you come to Danish Hill and help us proliferate baked goods across the land?"

I know this would result in dumb meme guilds. Someone's going to make the Goblin Slayer Guild, and they'll just murder low level mobs forever. And someone's going to make a guild where you have to dress like Pepe, and change your font to be green. But like... that sounds fun? Because someone's gonna get mad and go "This guild's purpose is to kill the Pepe guild!" and isn't that exactly the kind of thing that would happen if you ran a really big TTRPG? The Pepeists will be driven underground, and the Frog Slayers will eventually find other causes to champion, and all the rest of us can go "Man, remember the time when Pepe the Guild was the biggest thing happening on the server for like two months?"

I would probably actually sign up for an MMO again if they had that kind of creativity.

[luckthebard]

I'm gonna say something potentially controversial here, but I've been thinking a lot about some of the complaints regarding the final story arc of campaign 2. And I think it would really benefit a lot of the fandom to consider how much of that disappointment came from the tension between expectations of written narrative story beats that need to be resolved, and the reality that what we're all watching is not a traditionally crafted narrative, but a D&D game.

To get a bit more specific: The idea that the Cerberus Assembly was "abandoned" as a plot point or final arc is the one I see most often. But let's imagine what that would have looked like. Going after Ludinus and Trent would not have involved direct confrontation. It would have been of high importance to two characters (Beau and Caleb) far more than others, and utilized their skillsets more. It would have had quite a few moments of stalled momentum and downtime, because it's not a situation that lent itself to epic battle, but rather a politically delicate one requiring patience. Furthermore, for all that some people love to accuse some of the players of "main character syndrome," ending the campaign with an arc like that would absolutely have prioritized some characters over others, and given other players relatively little to do. And that's something important to consider, as a DM.

And that's sort of the crux of it. I'm far from belonging to the twitter ttrpg crowd that hates on D&D as a system every chance it gets, but the fact is D&D is a system that is better at supporting some kinds of narratives over others - just on the level of making sure everyone at a table can participate equally and have fun! And while D&D could support a slow-burn espionage arc, if you really wanted it to, that is not the kind of story I would run as a DM for 7 players, particularly if it's the kind of story that would lead to several of the characters best positioned sitting around and doing nothing. (As an aside, I could totally see a CA arc like that working far better at a smaller table. The effectiveness of the system is also related to the dynamics at the table and the number of players.) As a DM, one of the first priorities is to make sure all of your players feel engaged, involved, and that they can be active participants in the narrative, and feel heroic. The Somnovum arc was not only something that called and tied back to a lot of the themes of the whole campaign, it was also connected emotionally to every character through Lucien/Molly. That is absolutely not true of the Cerberus Assembly, which is why I'm of the opinion that, had the CA been the final arc of the campaign, it would have fallen flat.

This is the same issue around "why didn't they do a full game session resolving Zeenoth and Beau's dad?" - because while as a narrative that trial would have been interesting for Beau, what would the other players have been doing in such a scenario of several gaming sessions besides just sort of sitting around or getting into trouble and "derailing" the main focus? (And this is almost another point entirely, but I think this is at least some of the problem some people had watching the episode where Caduceus reunites with his family - that was very heavily RP focused on one character, and so when other players at the table were asked what they were doing in order to keep them engaged, they took actions that viewers perceived as taking away from what would have, in a traditional narrative, been the sole focus of the whole 4 hours - Caduceus RPing with his family. Tension, again, between traditional narrative expectations and storytelling through a gaming system.) At the end of the day, Critical Role is a D&D game, and as a game it is going to shift toward and support some narrative pathways more than others simply because that is the best way to keep all of the players involved and playing a game.

And here's the final thing: neither of those two storylines I pointed to actually got "dropped" - they were just RPed and addressed in the epilogue, which largely operated outside of the confines of the game system and focused more on pure, individualized RP. Matt even said something to this effect in the wrap-up -- the Cerberus Assembly take-down would probably work better as a story outside of the confines of D&D. It's, frankly, a little weird to me how often I still see people claiming these things "weren't addressed" when the epilogue clearly spent time making sure they were. I would read the hell out of a "Caleb and Beau take down corrupt government officials" book. Likewise, I think "Beau and Yasha wander the wastes of Xhorhas" would make a brilliant comic book. If the D&D game is the structure for the story, then yeah, some individual character narrative beats might not get resolved in the game itself. That's what the epilogue was for! And the reason I think this happened in C2 in a way it didn't in C1 was, the C2 characters were created differently and just individually had more complicated narratives and problems. C2 pushed a little more against the confines of what D&D is able to accomplish in supporting a narrative, which was both fascinating to watch and just exposed the difference between traditional narratives and gameplay narratives all the more.

[coldalbion]

THINGS WOT I HAVE LEARNT AFTER BEING VIRTUALLY HOUSEBOUND FOR 3 YEARS THAT MAY BE HELPFUL TO THOSE IN SELF ISOLATION AND/OR LOCKDOWN DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

(Background: I have a lifelong disability and am a wheelchair user. After surgery I’ve basically been stuck living and sleeping in one room for three years. These are things I have learnt which may help, though with the caveat that everyone is different, and baseline mental health varies.)

1. YOUR MENTAL HEALTH WILL PROBABLY SUFFER - and although humans are social creatures, even the most introverted will chafe against boundaries enforced upon them by circumstance. The degree to which it suffers will be related to your mental health baseline and physical health. Understand that this IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Stimuli and enrichment methods are required. It’s why animals need such things in zoos and conservation parks. This leads us on to my next point.

2. COMPREHEND WHICH ACTIVITIES ARE ACTIVE AND PASSIVE FOR YOU Spending your confinement solely doing passive things (watching TV, Netflix, browsing the internet, scrolling through the internet) will take a load off your brain and make the time pass quicker. But if that’s all you do, the sense of disconnection increases over time. Activities which require you to *do* something, even if it’s just engaging your motor skills via video games, or lifting some cans of beans, or actively reading - these deliberate acts foster a tiny sense of achievement which gives your brain a dose of helpful chemicals. If you want to consider your activities, look up the work of Marshall McLuhan as regards “hot media” and “cold media” (See https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/MIDD…/Hot_versus_cool_media for basic premise.) Balancing out your media intake with hot and cold activities keeps your brain active and pumping tasty neurotransmitters.

3. LIMIT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE TO SOCIAL PURPOSES. Infinite scrolling as found on many social media platforms is a hot medium, as per McLuhan. The reason Likes exist is to give that little spike of interactivity. It’s not a conspiracy to say many platforms are designed to keep you on them so they can show you more ads. (See also https://www.theguardian.com/…/has-dopamine-got-us-hooked-on… which explains the brain chemistry angle) However, DM’s and other messaging faculties are supremely useful. Use them to interact with your friends, indulge your fandom theories. Person to person interaction requires and enhances deep-seated neurological and biophysical reflexes. Text your mates. Skype/Facetime or otherwise call them. Use the technology of the 21st century for genuine social ends, deliberately. Catch up with their lives one to one or in groupchats.

4. PICK TIMES TO CHECK THE NEWS AND STICK TO THEM. This relates to point 3 - unfortunately we live in a 24hr news cycle, with constant liveblogging of important issues. This means that we’re constantly streaming anxiety inducing situations into our brains JUST IN CASE. That’s not helpful, particularly when you can’t actually DO anything about those events - the urge to DO something is why people are panic-buying. It’s a very basic primordial need to grab resources for defence. By picking times of the day to check news, you are again, making a DELIBERATE CHOICE, enacting some small level of agency, while at the same time limiting anxiety-inducing stimuli. If the news gets too much, then don’t check it as much - or at all - and do something else.

5. IF YOU DO THINGS WITH FRIENDS, SEE IF YOU CAN DO THEM ONLINE. Run that game of DnD/Other TTRPG you’ve been meaning to. Hold your book club online. Have a few drinks online over voice-chat if you are missing the pub. Hold watch parties for your favourite shows. The key, as ever, is to be engaged rather than passive. It’s harder if you’re ill, yes, but it can be done.

6. USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO CREATE THINGS. Write that fanfic. Start that novel. Design that game. Doodle. Paint. Humans have been creating since the day we became human. Consider things from the perspective of a pre-modern person. Make handprints on your own personal cave wall - contact each other and tell spooky stories. Build a complex fantasy world. Write an account of your confinement for some person to find pieces of years after you’re gone from the world. Think about a problem, and learn how to solve it via taking online classes (See http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses) Write an essay on your chosen passion or hyperfixation - nobody needs to read it but you. Treat yourself to intellectual stimulation, if that’s your thing.

7. IF YOU HAVE A SPIRITUAL. RITUAL, OR MEDITATIVE PRACTICE DO IT. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect, or limited in scope. This also includes atheists and those who despise woo - you have personal rituals, things you do that have Meaning to you as a person. Maybe it;s alphabetizing your music collection, or spring cleaning or cooking your favourite meal like grandma used to make. Humans have patterns they perform. When you perform them DELIBERATIVELY (or dare I say MINDFULLY) you become aware that these are the scaffolds that structure human life.

8. STRUCTURE YOUR TIME. Following on from 7, we often don’t realise the structure of our lives until it is disrupted. When that’s removed, our minds can go into freefall. If you’re isolated/in lockdown, oftentimes you won’t be able to access those structures. Rather than wait for them to to become accessible again and risk a period of feeling lost and directionless, which can enhance depression and anxiety, it’s best to develop a new structure based on the resources you have. It can be as loose or as strict as you like, but sticking to it allows us to develop a rhythm which makes time pass in recognisable fashion and gives us a sense of being-in-the-world as some sort of engaged process.

9. KEEP YOUR SLEEP PATTERN REGULAR AND LONG ENOUGH. The key here is REGULAR. Following on from 8, it’s important to keep your body well rested, as this aids your immune system and cuts down on the possibility of your body having to deal with stress . If you’re ill it’s harder to keep this regular, because sometimes your body just needs sleep to regenerate NOW. Equally in isolation, particularly if you’re feeling mentally low, it can be tempting to sleep forever, because y’know, you’re feeling low and what’s the point. (Of course the point is why we have 8 in particular, along with all the rest.)

OBVIOUSLY EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. Particularly for those with disabilities or chronic illnesses, we may be even more limited in our activities while isolated than able bodied folks. That said, the key is to remember that certainly during this pandemic, and otherwise YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE FEELING THIS WAY. Rubbish as it may be, many are in the same boat. If it pleases you to, seek them out - see what commonalities you have, what hopes and dreams and fascinations you may share. FIND THE OTHERS - it’s what humans have always done.

Be well.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2022-08-22

Plans progressing at whatever the opposite of apace is. I got no idea when any of this is going to pan out but it sure is happening.

Listening: Double entry here, 1) I've been using the Tohou music as my work soundtrack this week, so here's "A Midsummer Fairy's Dream"

In addition, I was reading some TTRPG posts and someone posited that if you're designing Goblins your sole criteria is "would they fit into this "The Chats" music video" which. Yeah you're not wrong.

I've had this stuck in my head for four days. Thanks.

Reading: Started on The Diamond Age because I've been picking up books and putting them down for like two weeks now and I needed a reliable deluge of concept. I was talking books with the friend who got me into Stephenson in the first place and we each got to tell each other about how some Stephenson book is a secret sequel to another book, the man has a problem.

Also rereading large chunks of my favourite KSP Letsplay, "Long Term Laythe." The original author migrated to a new hosting service finally so he's back online, it's a pretty long series that spans multiple real world and in game years of running a research base out in the gas giant of the game system, if I had to recommend one chapter as an introduction it'd be Chapter 12, in which a research plane is stranded on a remote island and a rescue is launched that employs hardware that's been sitting in orbit for years. Very notably this is all from old KSP before science got added so all of this is pure role-play.

Watching: Finally got around to watching The Matrix: Revolutions a few weeks after I did the other two. I still like all the Matrix movies! Well, I haven't seen the new one yet, but we'll see soon.

Making: Cooking adventures making some kind of cheesy mushroom thing out of leftover ingredients, and Shakshouka. Both turned out really well so they're now part of the repertoire.

Made some more progress on the Penrose Quilt and got the overall plan printed out so that we can keep track of what we're doing.

Playing: Board games day with The High School Friends. Wingspan, the bird-themed engine builder. Way more fun than I expected, and not nearly as confusing as it sounds. I kind of assumed such a cool looking game would have structural issues. I didn't build much of an engine per-se but I did set up some good multi-turn mechanisms.

Also a long, long game of Mansions of Madness which we did not win but which was extremely fun, Mansions is more of a physical CRPG than a board game but it uses the power of a computer assistant very effectively to make a game with lots of reliable threads to pull on that ramps up the complexity and keeps a lot of hidden clocks going in the background.

Tools and Equipment: Shout out to the bootlin kernel documentation. It's basically just running cscope against the kernel source code but online and that's exactly what you need sometimes. The ability to spin off dozens of tabs for every little identifier is extremely valuable when you're hunting for tiny little discrepancies.

[that-cartoony-villain]

i watched the first episode of campaign 1 and it was really fun! hopefully tomorrow i can watch the second ep already...

am i watching it solely because of laura bailey as vex? yes i am! leave me alone im gay...

i really want to go through this fast because i know more about c2 and would love to watch that but im committed to watching c1 first and i also really wanted to see the twins and keyleth in action because they seem fun!

if anyone wants to give some advice for watching or just talk about cr pls do :D i want more ttrpg friends!

[utilitycaster]

Oof, the first half of the episode is a little rough ngl. I like the second half with Aabria a lot more. The first group does get better as the episodes go on if that helps at all.

Also, to add a bit more context to Kollok: the creators - Hyper RPG - are filmmaking nerds and are mostly known on Twitch for their various virtual productions.

So Kollok has a lot of those post production visual effects and sound effects, which is them using their strengths to create a show, similar to CR and voice acting and D20 and improv comedy.

Obviously that's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea and it can get a little too much I admit, but it's not that bad of a show.

Hi anon,

I am...not sure if you read this in the necessary context (this provides some, and this some more, and if I'm being totally honest based on this I don't feel like you read my entire weird rant, which to be fair, it is long and weird but covers quite a lot of issues I have) but I am coming in with the premise of "I think heavy post production of actual play is a poor choice." It don't care that it's their strength; I think that if that's your strength you would do better to apply it to scripted works or to improvised non-actual play shows.

I will freely admit that I went in expecting it not to be my cup of tea for that reason, and with an added grudge of "being hyped up and cited as brilliant by Polygon's AP/TTRPG team, with whom I almost always disagree," but did genuinely want to give it a shot in as good faith as I could muster, instead of solely talking shit about. I hoped the acting, premise, and GM-ing might shine through even though the effects were unlikely to win me over and indeed were likely to annoy me.

That was not the case. I found the GM-ing (Driving?) style profoundly grating and pretentious (and I have a very high tolerance for pretension), the premise nothing to write home about, and honestly I don't know jack about sound mixing but I do know I have perfectly good hearing and had to crank my laptop speakers up to higher than I have to for CR or D20 for the prologue to the prologue only to subsequently hear some of the most irritating static sounds at top volume for the prologue, so I'm not even impressed by the production.

And to be clear: that's all fine. I think people are drawn to different aspects in actual play, and there's room for all sorts of shows. I might even finish this episode simply because if I were recommending something to someone else, and they quit an hour into a 3.5 hour episode, I'd feel a little miffed. But I really don't expect it to ever be my thing, and I watched it mostly because it felt uninformed to be criticizing heavy production in actual play without watching a notably deliberately heavily produced actual play show.

I do want to wrap up, and this isn't specifically directed at you but: when it comes to my opinions on a work, I'm not going to say I'm never going to be swayed by an anon ask because who knows, it could happen, but it's very unlikely. If I dislike something, I don't really care if other people like it - I'd never send anons or get on their posts or maintag something like the post I just made (and which I made nonrebloggable specifically to prevent it from spreading into fan spaces) but I hope that people who like something can show me the same respect and permit my dislike. If you're a fan I will not be offended nor resentful if you unfollow or block me or whatever you need to do, but I can pretty confidently say that new cast members or improved acting will not change the fact that this is extremely not for me.

[emjs-good-out-here]

Unrelated to anything that actually involves me in any way, but I do wish people would realise that no one wants an outsider's opinions on how they play their TTRPG or general RP character. Like, if you don't like how someone else plays their character in a game that you're not a part of? Then don't watch/follow/whatever that person or that show. Literally that simple. No one is forcing you to do that, and I'm sure there's another show or another RPer out there that's more suitable for you.

Do not ever send someone hate over the things that their fictional character does, or make assumptions about who they are as a person based solely on that. Just don't. It's a shitty thing to do, and it only breeds negativity.

[trashcatsnark]

What’s your opinion on Kerry being available to only male V when it’s mentioned in-game that he’s bi (correct me if I’m wrong, I have terrible memory)?? I feel like they should’ve had bi romance options if they were able to implement both gay and straight ones.

Oh anon, oooooh anon. I love you dearly, but you intentionally or not might as well have thrown lit dynamite in my ask box. This discourse has been such a strange beast within this fandom and I have definitely shared some vague thoughts about it before. I’m putting everything under a read more, to help stave off some....harassment or putting it in people’s lives who may not want it. 

 I still remember I was frankly heartbroken and upset when I first learned Kery wasn’t romanceable by female V when the game first officially came out, but before I played it; River and Panam weren’t even really known about, cause they weren’t talked about much in the promo material,  plus Kerry was shown in romance scenes with what looked to be female V. So, if you go back far enough you’ll find me in December cope posting and being the saddest and angriest of beans, because other than Johnny who I knew was likely off the table. He was one of the only characters I wanted to potentially romance. Now, I’m further away from it, have  processed my feelings regarding it and am more rational I believe regarding the issue. 

But, that being said, a large issue of this sort of discourse is that; no matter what anyone says, someone somwhere is upset. I’ve been insulted, blocked, accused of fetishizing gay men, and so much over my opinion regarding this matter. I’m still currently debating if I even wanna tag this, cause the issue almost always brings negativity to my blog and to me. I have very little interest in being berated for this, so we’ll see how I feel after I finish typing this all out. I’m going to try to go through all my issues, my points, my troubles and feelings about the matter. But, at the end of the day, it is merely my opinion. If someone disagrees, fine, just don’t attack people or berate them over pixels in a video game. Just dont. That’s all I ask. Okay, so I’m gonna divide this into talking points and whatever, now. 

Firstly, Kerry is bisexual. Point blank, period. I’ve seen folks try to argue that his wife was like comphet, which if you dont know means that sometimes exclusively homosexual people will try to force themselves into heterosexual relationships because society has conditioned them to believe they have to be straight. While, I’m not negating the fact that this happens, as a bisexual/pansexual (I use the terms interchangeably to define my experience and feelings)  person I’ve struggled with it when making sense of my attraction to women. It genuinely is something that happens. This is not the case for Kerry; he doesn’t ever hide his attraction to men, between TTRPG lore and the video game he has had two wives , and he is stated by game developers and TTRPG creator to be bisexual.He is bisexual. Getting that out there, saying other wise, in my opinion is a level of bi erasure. That being said, I do still have my grievances with how the game chose to handle his bisexuality and bisexuality as whole, also imo, the game generally doesn’t seem...to treat players who are attracted to men well… 

But before I get into that, I wanna make clear, I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 should have had more romance options for every orientation. If you’re not going to create a player-sexual style of romance; ie where every romanceable character is attracted to the player regardless and wish to focus on each character having their own predetermined sexuality; only have one character for each sexuality is kind of bullshit. If you’re a lesbian player and you’re not into Judy, you get nothing, except a fuck around with Meredith (who I will get to later). You’re a straight woman, but not into River, shit out of luck. You’re a gay man who’s not into Kerry, sucks to suck bud. You’re a straight man who’s not into Panam (kind dont get how you wouldn’t be but who am i to judge), well, you can fuck Meredith… so woooo. Oh also, if you’re not attracted to women, you will still be forced to watch in first person pov a sex scene with Alt and if you want Johnny to like you, you gotta date a girl. Also, all the male love interests will be sidelined mostly…. Hooray… But I digress, either go in with all romance options bi/pan/player sexual, or give more options for romance. Cause now you have the issue of people not getting the partner they hoped for and not liking their only option. Now, you got people trying to make the Judy  bi, which is lesbian erasure and lesbophobic, along with people saying Kerry isn’t bi and can’t be with women which is bi erasure and biphobic. Whereas, if you had just gone in from the get go with either more options or a player-sexual romance system; we wouldn’t be here, CDPR. 

Okay, so next thing, now that I’ve addressed my issues with the entire romance system and that yes, Kerry is bi. Should Kerry have been able to be romanced as female V? Yes and no. Which sounds vague, but I’m going somewhere. With the current set up of it; Kerry being romanceable to a female V would have unfairly given female players an additional love interest over male players. Female V would have the option of Judy, River, or Kerry. And Male V’s would have the option of Kerry or Panam. That’s not fair. I get that, inherently. CDPR painted themselves into a corner, by only letting there be two romances for “each” gender, one for “each” sexuality, and then using a canonically bi character for one of them. They played themselves, they were either gonna have to give an unfair amount of love interest to one side of their gender system or make a bi character who will only pursue one gender. So, they went for the latter. 

Now, some people feel thats fine, because Kerry having a gender preference is fine and its okay for bi people to lean a certain way in regards to gender and its okay for them to not be attracted to people. And that is true. I am a bisexual woman who leans a little more towards men, I get that. However, I have only been given one reason for Kerry’s preference for male V over female V. And it was by a developer of the game who stated that Kerry pursues Male V and not Female V because Male V reminds him more of Johnny… And I hate that. I personally, hate it so deeply, because to me it does a complete disservice to Kerry and V’s relationship and Kerry’s arc. Because even with female V you see him being preoccupied with Johnny and V’s connection to Johnny, then you see him move past that. So, to then state, its still a deciding factor in him romancing V is so wrong to me. Like why???? Why would you do that to people who like Kerry??? Why would you put that in their heads, that Kerry on some level, subconsciously or not, was thinking about Johnny when he decides to romance V. Cause that’s not in the game, in the game you get the vibe he’s moving on past Johnny, like he’s growing, developing, genuinely likes V. But that stupid tweet, just radiates rancid vibes, whyyy???  

And then, outside of that nasty tweet, I have to ask what other reason is there for why he prefers male V over fem V.  They’re...the same characters essentially, just with different pronouns and body type. They also can look like whatever you want; they’re completely customizable. So, Its based off of what the game associates with  gender characteristics and nothing else, meaning, his attraction is rooted solely in their gender and he turns down fem V by virtue of them being a woman and nothing else. Which, yeah, bisexual/pansexual people have preferences but when that preference completely excludes a gender based on nothing but gender…. Uhh????? See my issue???? 

And I’ve seen people saying, well, its better than CDPR playing into slutty will date anybody bisexual stereotypes. But, the thing is...THEY STILL DO THAT which is what drives me up the god damn wall; they managed to do slutty bi stereotypes and I don’t even get kiss the boy, which again, I get the need for fairness but wow, just wow. And lemme explain. 

Meredith is the only character, other than joytoys, whom you can have sex with regardless of gender, body type, etc. She is the only character who shows that she is attracted to V on some level regardless of gender. 

She is a one night stand. Her sex animations are the same as joytoys. She treated like a promiscuous love phobic woman.  And having characters like that is fine, my own V is promiscuous and love phobic. But, we can acknowledge that in a video game by a AAA game company having the only character who is at least physically attracted to the player no matter what, be nothing but sex fodder...isn’t great bi representation, right? 

Oh, and Kerry himself still is a promiscuous bisexual man, he just won’t romance female V because apparently, according to a dev, they don’t remind him of Johnny enough. AND THATS THE DEVS WORDS, NOT MINE, I HATE THAT. Like, Kerry is shown to have people’s lingerie around his house. He’s stated by Johnny to be someone who fucks around. He gets a blowjob from a man in a stairwell. 

The two most blatantly canonically bi character in this game are promiscuous; one wont romance V at all and just wants sex, the other will only romance a male V because at worse, he’s comparing them mentally subconsciously to his dead friend and at best….because….reasons…. Literally, from what I understand for Kerry to romance V, they have to have the “male” body type and “male” voice. Meaning, fem V could literally by all appearances look like masc V, body type wise, but because she uses female pronouns and has a feminine sounding voice...no… the stars say no… 

In my honest opinion, it is bad bisexual representation and a not so well thought out romance system for a game. 

But, that being said, I literally never romance anyone, because I’m a Johnny simp. So, the fuck do I know.

oh god do i tag this.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[twistedapple]

Bianca Bosconero - Snow White stayed in the wild

Biographical Information

Gender: Female

Age: Rude.

Birthday: November 1st (Scorpio)

Height: 158cm

Eye colour: Golden

Hair colour: Black

Homeland: Valley of Thorns

Family: Neve Bosconero (twin sister), unnamed parents

Professional Information

Dorm: Pomefiore

School Year: Second 

Class: 2A, Student no.5

Occupation: Student, Part-time worker (NRC’s library)

Club: Writing/School newspaper

Best Subject: History of Magic, Defensive Magic

Appearance

Petite but fit and light on her feet, Bianca moves gracefully and learned to look regal in most circumstances. If one were to solely judge by appearances, it’d be very obvious that she is in Pomefiore. Her natural beauty is amplified by the various contrasts between her snow white skin, hair dark as night, red lips and eyes like golden amber. Unsurprisingly, she learned to work around it all to enhance her features with the help of solid routines and a proper knowledge of makeup. As a personal rule, she favours styles that are simple and efficient, that create a line, a memorable silhouette. It is both reflected in a rather minimal makeup - smoked, deep brown and some eyeliner to intensify her cat eye look, some clever pin point correcting and a bit of red added to the lips - and her choice of outfits, especially in the way she wears her regular uniform. 

Her school uniform underwent modifications, either subtles - such as the higher collar of her dress shirt and the sharper waist line of the Pomefiore purple vest - or straight up individualised, with a skirt tailored to emulate Edwardian walking skirts with a shorter, more modern length right below the knees, but the ever present pleats in the back to give her silhouette an iconic S-shape (also achieved with the use of boby shaping underwears). Opaque black stockings held by garters, as well as black high heels in a fine suede leather to maintain a visual continuity, complete the overall tailored look, elegantly mixing a rather masculine top with a more feminine bottom for a sharp look. 

Her dorm uniform matches the standards, with long purple robes over a black adjusted outfit. However, she deemed the height of the boots over her ankle ill-fitting and managed to have them become thigh-high instead. There may or may not be regular bickerings about that.

Her PE uniform has a purple, long sleeved undershirt to protect as much skin as possible, as well as matching leggings under the school overall - which she wears with short sleeves and legs. With this outfit, she wears grey trainers with orange details and laces.

Her ears are pierced - she removes her earrings for PE class -, she has a beauty spot below the right eye and she uses a deep red nail polish on her carefully manicured nails - not too long, not too short, the ideal length for her slender hands without having her nails in the way on a daily basis. Her long hair is partially pulled up in a cleverly messy bun, with braids and golden ornaments to animate the updo. She keeps it in a simple braid for PE.

Personality

Bianca knows how to provide a good first impression and as such tends to be fairly laidback and willing to interact with her surroundings. Polite and pleasant, she enjoys having fun, be it with other people or at their expanses. This relaxed, go-with-the-flow type of behaviour makes it easy for her to fit with all sorts of people, and she’s probably that one person who’s more or less familiar with half the school, since she’s decent with people and excels at them. 

Perceptive and adaptable, she keeps going back and forth between an active behaviour and a more observant position. Her habit regarding people watching means she pays a great deal of attention between what is said and what is shown. With a detail-oriented nature, she tends to pick up on subtle cues and signs that quietly provide her informations regarding the persons she interacts with - whether they like it or not. Paradoxally, it puts her in a situation where people may be tempted to question her logic and wonder if she’s dense or whimsically clever. It’s especially visible in her not-so-equal results as a student: she may be clueless while facing simple tasks, while pulling a full mark off on delicate exercises, because she possesses an out-fo-the-box line of thinking that isn’t always suited for the conformism required by a school. This is because being perceptive is fine, but being interested matters just as much for her. If she’s not interested and/or doesn’t get the logic behind what’s presented to her, failure is more likely to happen. As such, despite her adaptability, she can also demonstrate a fickle, stubborn nature that’s not the easiest to handle. 

Independent and bold, she has a good head on her shoulders and is quick to take informed decisions. This behaviour is especially informed by certain events in her life, that forced her to grow up faster in order to move forward and deal with certains issues. As such, she’s a fast learner and demonstrate a level of wisdom and maturity that isn’t exactly common in a school full of teens. In consequence, her insight tends to be valued, especially since she tends to provide her opinion while considering as many angles to a problem and its solution as possible, thanks to her out-of-the-box type of thinking. She has the grace to provide her advices without giving a judgement - unless one abuses her patience and keep slamming a wall without considering her suggestions, in which case she’ll be prompt to tell that person what she personally thinks. This side of her personality has been feeding her Local Reliable Big Sister sort of reputation. 

However, while people tend to come to her to talk about their problems - and she’s not going to spill anything out -, she remains very secretive as far as her own life is concerned. The smallest handful of people knows what’s going on privately, and half of that handful if the NRC staff because certain events recently affected her to the point she had to put her school life between parenthesis for a time before coming back. Despite her pleasant, if quite fickle, personality, she tends to bottle a lot of things up and isn’t a fan of nosy people. She’s quick to catch up of these people, and even quicker to tell them to mind their own business. As far as she is concerned, she picks who she’s going to confide to, and that choice will be carefully informed. Nobody decides for her, not anymore.

Magic

Her Unique Magic is called Forest Queen. It allows her various levels of summonings on a “territory” she can expend up to a certain degree to make the summons appear. She can declare herself the territory (which she usually does because it’s the most economic method magic-wise) or make it as large as a magift stadium (though she’d only do that as a last resort for now, as it’s really taxing). In this territory, she can bring forth up to seven dreadful beasts - each having its own characteristics and appearance. Some can hide and strike before retreating to the shadows, others can straight up be wild, brutal beasts out for a hunt. When fully expanded, her territory takes the appearance of a dense primal forest where one could easily feel lost. 

She very rarely deploys her full strength because it’s dangerous for her and puts her at a very high risk of overblotting - however when it happens, don’t expect her to pull any punch. She will become as wild as her territory - revealing that side of herself she usually keeps in check to put people at ease.

Most of the time, she declares herself the territory and summons up to two beasts. Using the territory recently added new strange effects, as she improved her skills: it seems she’s become “closer” to her magic and gained a passive ghost-like presence, while the forest itself seems to act more and more like a locked space. It seems she still has some things to uncover in regard to Forest Queen.

Fun Facts

Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous (initially left-handed)

Favorite Food: Apple and cinnamon tart

Least Favorite Food: Anything greasy or overly sweet

Bad With: Authoritarians, noisy places, mathematics

Hobby: TTRPG, reading, people watching

Talents: Writing, singing