ashton and fearne severely weakened by the lava dive… the whole party low on spells bc it’s been a while since they’ve had ANY rest… can’t teleport out with fearne restrained and no easy way out of the very tight cavern…… LUDINUS FUCKING DA’LETH showing up………… REVIVAL MAGIC NOT WORKING……………… i think i’ve seen this film before and i didn’t like the ending
I feel like the Otohan situation on a viewer level is very much not taking into account the fact that maybe she was boring to us, the audience, but I KNOW INTIMATELY that feeling of dread on Marisha’s face every time she yelled TRESHI SCRY BALL, like you have not experienced true fear like barely escaping an encounter with an OP Mook that’s going to take your ass down and how exciting/terrifying it is every time they show up no matter how unimportant to the plot they are. Like that was for THEM.
Anyway I swear I’m done having opinions on something I don’t actually care that much about because whatever it was, it was good and the players were emotionally compromised by it in the best way, but lol it does seriously remind me of my gaming days. I have been in that fight with that asshole and I was scared and had fun and had some of the most epic moments from it.
Throwing my hat in the ring, I think Sam is going to (not should, going to) most likely come back with some sort of paladin, Most likely ancestries, imo, are dwarf, kenku, or a very small tabaxi. One of the moon people would be fun but it's harder to justify them with good healing abilities, short of some sort of bioengineer themed artificer. Either he utilizes the jail break that was concurrent with the split-party mission to bring in a paladin of a Betrayer god (very juicy potential that brings in god-loyalty from a new direction) or throws a lawful good paladin from Vasselheim at them and watches everyone cringe.
In conclusion: I think they should let Sam play Teven Klask's daughter.
i made a red moon rising bingo for bells hells’ time at the moon, and the only item crossed so far has been “the farm girl goes through insurmountable amounts of pain”
For all this Moon lore we're getting on Ruidus I do feel like the Imperium is planning on a very Early Christianity Movement route of things
"We want to live on Exandria, sure people will be welcoming but some probably won't, better to just go down there guns a'blazing going 'My god can beat up your gods in a fight' and settle in that way"
I love it when the Bell's Hells are kicking ass, but I also really, really love it when things start looking sketchy, when we start seeing the flinch reflexes and old wounds aching, and the way they scatter- or gather- in the dust.
thinking about all of the things that could’ve gone wrong during the otohan fight and actively letting it haunt me. like if imogen had failed her deception check to make otohan think that she was still down? otohan 100% would have stayed and perma-killed her.
it's legit so funny watching all the hardcore rule-loving bros on instagram shit their pants just because they were 'forced' to watch someone else dm in the main campaign. cry about it. aabria iyengar be upon ye.
Every now and again I'm reminded of how fundamentally different ttrpg liveplays are as a storytelling medium from literally any other and it drives me a little bit bonkers. So much comes down to chance; you can plan and strategize and have some absolutely wild modifiers, but if you roll a nat 1 you still roll a nat 1. It doesn’t matter how important a character is to the narrative and how many plans the players have for them, they can still die at any time and be inevitably lost because the dice told you, sorry, resurrection didn’t work this time. And then we build the narrative around that, an echoing hole that can never be mended, because we have no other choice but to move one.
You never know if a risky choice will be rewarded or punished. You can go into what looks like an easy fight and lose bitterly due to bad luck, or into what should be an impossible one and still win. You will never be reassured by the knowledge that it’s a prewritten, planned out story where some things are bound to happen for maximum narrative impact.
But neither will moments feel cheapened by the knowledge that it was always bound to happen. A character comes back to life in a movie and, well, you know it’s because the narrative needed them and they were never truly at risk; they come back in the game and you know just how easily the dice could have landed on a different number and it wouldn’t have mattered how needed they were.
It can, if we allow it, remind us that purpose and meaning in real life has nothing to do with inevitability or fate; it’s all about what we make it, the choices that arise out of chance, the consequences that come from choice. We create our own narrative out of inherent meaninglessness and chaos and it is beautiful.