#oxventure presents

[stickthisbig]

I was thinking about Extinction and it kind of bummed me out, SO instead I started thinking about what my ultimate dream game + DM matchups for Oxventure Presents would be:

1. Andy running They Came from Beyond the Grave!: The They Came From series is amazing, and its ethos of players-as-writers would really suit this bunch. They're all good, but Beyond the Grave would play very nicely into Andy's vintage horror sensibilities

2. Ellen running Weave: I don't know if this game would actually stand up to streaming, but I would love to see it, I think it would really suit her in the way that it is often gentle but not cloying

3. Jane running the Dragon Age TTRPG: as a dating simulator. NOW KISS

4. Johnny running Pathfinder: Hell's Rebels: it is my favorite AP, Johnny would totally vibe with a setting about starting a revolution with a prissy villain and trans and genderfluid NPCs. Get ready to fall in love with Laria Longroad and make a lot of jokes about mint

5. Gravity RIP: go with me on this, because you'll want to:

Luke as the GM, clearly

Mike on PIP as the color commentary

A split season with Dicebreaker/Three Black Halflings

Where the teams are decided by draw in the first episode.

You know that would fuckin slap.

[molly-yasha]

Episode 7, the first time somebody thought to go to cover.

[oxventurequotes]

anyways uhhh here's the hobby horses (and luke) as troubled birds

oxventure-as-troubled-birds part two

[oxventure-text-posts]

[a-casual-egg]

Teens In Space kinda feels like V.I.N.N.I.E. accidentally adopted three kids. He's like the dad who didn't want the pet, but instead of a pet, it's three teenagers.

[transgaypiratesanta]

Radian Inu

Hey! I tried drawing Andy’s Teen’s in space character, Radian Inu.

I’m looking at the official design right now, and it doesn’t match very well, so I’m sorry about that. But hey, I like it.

He strikes me as the sort of person to be a little messy, so I gave him an unbuttoned jacket button :D

here is a coloured version:

[thatbiologist]

Egbert the Careless - Blades in the Dark

Here's my latest miniature concept, Volisport Egbert.

[banrionceallach]

Never have I so clearly seen someone regret all their life choices as when I watch the latest Oxventure.

[shutupeiffel]

Been Dreaming Through My Lonely Past

Fandom: Oxventure (Blades In The Dark)

Characters: Zillah Bruseau, Kasimir Jones, Edvard Lumiere, Lilith Cappellanaga, Barnaby Fortescue III

Relationships: Zillah Bruseau/Kasimir Jones/Edvard Lumiere

Summary:

In Volisport, there is a tradition that, on the 29th of Feburary, women will propose to their partners. It's an outdated throwback to years past that almost everyone has forgotten about. Except Zillah.

When the opportunity to show her partners just how much she loves them arises, Zillah takes full advantage.

Ao3 Link

[stickthisbig]

This is a longshot but go with me:

A Call of Cthulhu game that ties in with Prudence's backstory in the same style as Ox:BitD

ETA: oh, it's Lasers and Feelings. It begins with an L and ends with an S

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Valicer In The Dark (the Blades In The Dark AU)

Yes, finally, actually doing a PROPER POST on this AU that I’ve mentioned in passing a couple of times! How it came about is like this:

1. I’m a fan of Outside XBox, Outside Xtra, and their DnD stuff, Oxventure

2. While perusing the Funny Moments section of Oxventure on TV Tropes one day last year, I found that they had a side series where they play “Blades In The Dark” (where you and your friends play a daring criminal gang in a world that used to be a fun fantasy setting, but then the apocalypse happened, the sun exploded, most of the continents got sunk/flooded, the seas are now like liquid space full of whale-demons, there are ghosts everywhere because something happened to the afterlife, and they hunt the whale demons because you can make electricity out of their blood).

3. Intrigued, I read the TV Tropes page on BitD, then went over to the official website, and eventually got so into it I ordered a PDF of the book so I could get to know the setting and the mechanics properly and do what I always do in these situations -- stat up Victor and Alice, and in this case Smiler (as I was getting into that around the same time as the Valicer stuff took off in my brain)!

And yeah, this has been a little side project I’ve poked at from time to time ever since! It’s a fun little AU, and I’ve been enjoying adapting the trio to the setting of the RPG. Here’s the basics of what I’ve come up with so far:

Alice was the daughter of Dean Arthur Liddell of the prestigious Doskvol Academy (located in Whitecrown, THE fancy bit of Duskwall, the central city of the setting -- the Lord Governor lives there, away from the riffraff) and his wife Lorina, and the younger sister of Lizzie. The family had a happy life living in Brightstone (the next-fanciest district) -- up until one Angus Bumby entered Doskvol Academy and became obsessed with Lizzie. When she rebuffed his advances, he broke into the house, had his way with her, and set the place on fire to both cover his crime and try to destroy the bodies so they couldn’t let out ghosts. Alice was the sole survivor, and after a year in hospital spent convalescing from her burns, got sent to Rutledge Asylum, here situated right next to Duskwall’s freaking PRISON. This Alice is probably the only one who had a WORSE time in there than in canon, as psychiatry is basically an unknown art in Duskwall, and I imagine a lot of lunatics are just locked up to rot or have their souls ripped out so they can become slave labor -- a fate Alice avoided solely due to being a minor. She still had her Wonderland in this world, though, and was able to use it to lever herself out of her catatonia and eventually deal with her grief enough to join the waking world. . .and promptly ended up sent to the Hounsditch Home in Charhollow (one of the “poor but honest” districts), where she was to help the owner, Dr. Bumby, as general dogsbody. As per A:MR, after about a year here, Wonderland kicked her in the pants and helped her realize Bumby was the one that killed her family -- but unlike canon, by the time of the main action of the AU, she has NOT pushed him onto any train tracks. Mostly because that would likely result in him leaving a ghost, and a spectral Bumby is the LAST thing she wants to deal with. Her playbook is the Cutter, the fighters and heavy hitters, and she starts with the Not To Be Trifled With special ability, which allows her to push herself to perform superhuman feats of strength and fighting prowess (including taking up to six people at once!).

Victor is the son of William and Nell Van Dort, fish merchants living in Nightmarket (one of the main shopping districts, and where the “new money” tends to live). William invented canned fish when Victor was young, which the public pounced on, and his canneries easily made the Van Dorts the wealthiest family in Nightmarket. Nell wanted to eventually make the transition to Brightstone, though, and thus when Victor came of age, she started trying to arrange a marriage with one of the noble families living there. She got lucky shortly before the beginning of the AU, as the Everglots (an old noble family whose fortunes were on the downswing -- noble families control the ships that hunt the whale-demon “leviathans” in this world, and their ship was coming back dry more often than not, meaning their power, prestige, and most importantly coin was running out) consented to let Victor marry their daughter Victoria in exchange for some of that sweet sweet Van Dort fortune. As per canon, Victor and Victoria met right before the wedding rehearsal, and while they liked each other, it wasn’t enough to calm Victor’s nerves. Three hours of failed practice, one dropped ring, and one burn on Maudeline Everglot’s dress from a forgotten candle later, and Victor was banished into the streets to learn his lines. He wandered around for a while, trying to get them straight in his head, and eventually got them right down an old forgotten alley. . .only for the wandering ghost of a bride, Emily, to hear them and think they were meant for her. Victor was promptly dragged into the “ghost field,” the spectral echo of the city where ghosts live, and held captive by Emily (whom he did feel sorry for, but ghosts are bad news in Duskwall -- they tend to lose their minds quickly due to not being able to pass on, and Emily was showing a few signs of “going feral,” as it were). The main AU is actually kicked off by him finally escaping her and finding his way back to the material plane by falling out of a wall in front of Alice and Smiler. . . His playbook is the Whisper, the arcane and magical ones, and he starts with the Ghost Sense special ability, which allows him to sense the presence of all supernatural things in his area and have an easier time getting information on them.

Smiler was the “son” of one Dr. Kellard Kelman, owner of The Sanctuary, a refuge for people who have “lost their smile” -- in actuality, a horrible hellhole of a “mental hospital” where Dr. Kelman conducted experiments on the patients and threw failures in the basement. Smiler and their father clashed about a lot of things (including Kelman’s brutal methods for ensuring “social compliance” and his refusal to accept Smiler as nonbinary), and eventually Smiler just ran away at about twelve years old, rather than be a part of Kelman’s nonsense any further. They ended up in Silkshore (the “red light” district), where they encountered Carol and Matthew Alton, members of the Advocates cult, who worship Mar-Mal, the Unending Smile. Matt and Carol took in the young Smiler and told them what the cult was all about (basically, maximizing happiness however possible, from genuine kind acts to straight-up selling drugs and hypnotizing people) -- Smiler thought it all sounded better than Kelman’s deal and joined up, changing their name from Marmaduke Kelman to Smiler Alton. They proved to be a very eager little cultist, developing a knack for hypnosis and -- as they got older -- a talent with chemical concoctions, eventually making a drug that induced a heavy state of bliss that they called Joy Serum. The invention of this drug caused Mar-Mal to mark them with its favor, turning their previously green eyes a glowing yellow (Matt and Carol were so proud!). At the start of the main AU, they spend most of their time brewing up and selling Joy Serum in Silkshore -- not far from The Mangled Mermaid where Alice’s old nanny now plies her trade as a prostitute, meaning Smiler and Alice are at least somewhat acquainted just from her visits to see Nan there. Their playbook is -- well, it’s mostly the Leech, the tinkerers and chemists, but they also share some stuff with the Slide playbook, the smooth-talkers and manipulators. They start with the Alchemist special ability, which gives them bonuses to any alchemical concoctions they craft and a free recipe (like their Joy Serum).

How they meet -- Well, as indicated, Smiler and Alice were already acquainted from Alice’s trips to see Nan in Silkshore, with Smiler being a friendly presence who’d helped Alice out a couple of times in the past (spotting her money for meals and suchlike). As a result, when Alice fled the Houndsditch Home looking for help with her Bumby problem (either a way to bring evidence to the Inspectors, the only members of the police force known to be incorruptible, or at least not subject to bribes, or a way to kill him and make sure he didn’t come back as a ghost), her first instinct was to go to Nanny, and along the way she encountered Smiler. Her attempt to tell them what was going on was interrupted by Victor’s attempted escape from Emily, however, and the two ended up helping him over to the Mangled Mermaid to just get some food and water in him and help him calm down after his experience. Unfortunately, Emily managed to follow them there and got rather annoyed at finding her husband in a brothel -- fortunately, before she could do any damage, Smiler managed to talk her down (mainly by reminding her that humans gotta eat). Victor took the opportunity to finally explain to her what he’d been doing and that he was already engaged --

But when he mentioned Victoria’s name, Nanny commented that she’d heard that she’d already gotten married that day, to someone named “Lord Barkis.” And Emily recognized the “Barkis” name, as that was the name of the man who killed her. She and Victor agreed they had to go see Victoria for her own good, just in case she’d gotten married to a murderer, and Smiler and Alice chose to come along as back-up. The three took a gondola over to Brightstone (as Duskwall is part Venice as well as being part Victorian London, and is cut all over the place by canals) and crashed the Everglot-Barkis wedding reception, where Emily did indeed identify Barkis as her murderer. Barkis attempted to take Victoria hostage as the guests fled, but the group was able to free her -- Victor sending her away to get help or at least find a safe place to hide -- and Emily ended up destroying herself to possess Barkis and kill him, thanking Victor for at least helping her get revenge on her killer. The local police, the Bluecoats, finally arrived once the deed was done, and searched the corpse while the trio tried to explain what happened --

And then one of the Bluecoats found a fancy brass mask on Barkis. Marking him as one of the Spirit Wardens, the group that goes around collecting corpses and burning them in electroplasm to make sure that the city isn’t entirely overrun by ghosts. A group of people bankrolled by the Immortal Emperor himself.

Yeah, that’s not good. The Bluecoats, already not really believing the gang’s story, decided they’d murdered Barkis (or, at least Alice and Smiler had -- Victor got added to the list when he refused to just run off back home or bribe them) and were prepared to take them in, but Alice managed to hold off the entire gang with a butcher’s knife just long enough for them to start running. Through various means (like Smiler just straight-up injecting a purser with joy serum and using a homemade flash bomb, and Victor managing to accidentally lead a couple more into a very angry, very electric ghost by using his new Ghost Sense to help his new friends avoid it), the trio was able to escape into Six Towers, a previously rich neighborhood fallen to ruin and squatters in recent years. They found shelter in an abandoned building, which proved to be the old home of one Elder Gutknecht, a former Whisper who had managed to keep his senses after death and become a genuinely friendly ghost. The three began wondering what to do next, and Alice finally told Victor and Smiler the full story about Bumby. . .

And either Victor or Smiler was like, “Well, we’re already accused of murder. . .”

And so the group became a crew, with their first scores being to take care of Bumby and to get Victor’s stuff back from his family house! I picture them as a group of Shadows, spies, thieves, and saboteurs, though there’s a bit of a Hawker element because Smiler is of course still selling Joy Serum (and is working on an inhaled drug called Giggler Gas). And even though they are criminals, they’re trying to help where they can -- Victor, after figuring out how to infuse insects with ghost stuff to make glowing moths and stuff to help plants grow, wants to make a community greenhouse for people; Alice still looks after the kids at Houndsditch as best she can from afar, and is only too happy to kill other people hurting children for free; and Smiler of course does want to spread happiness, even if it’s in a bit of a bizarre way sometimes. They’re my chaos crime morally gray group and I love them. :p Hopefully I’ll be able to flesh them out even more for you in the future!

[oxventurequotes]

johnny: i can't believe you're all forgetting that at night time space comes down to the ground in geth so you've all got personal oxygen supplies!

[melsrainpod]

so my partner and our mutual friend are watching Idle Champions Presents: Fury of the Black Rose together, and they're catching up, so right now they're on episode 3

for those who don't know, Johnny and Ellen are playing their characters Rust and Merilwen of Oxventure fame, and the whole cast is amazing, go watch it if you haven't

(spoilers for the first major plot point of that episode under cut)

we have an agreement with my partner that they'll text me if they feel like they have some emotions to spill or something to say, and right now I got the following message on discord: "they fucking leveled up // during a session"

so I reply with a simple *yup* and start writing something to the tune of "they probably talked about what they would take in case of a level up before the game even began" to justify how quickly it happened in the relative timeframe of the episode, but before I manage to finish writing my sentence they send me the following, verbatim:

Johnny, take notes

so now I'm a little broken and if anyone asks for me I'm silently laughing on the floor

hashtag give the oxventurers the level up they deserve!!

[leftmysoulbythesideoftheroad]

i am forever grateful that i learned to love beer while i was buying it for myself because it means that my taste is so goddamn cheap. i got a 12 pack of miller high life for $10, and that’s at least two nights of getting comfortably tipsy without feeling guilty about spending money we don’t have

[transgaypiratesanta]

so I’ve seen some posts of quotes from the oxventure, and OH BOY. I have full-on NOTES about the oxventure and every piece of canon and fan theories I can get my grubby little paws on, AND I HAVE A LOT OF QUOTES. SO…. HAVE FUN WITH THESE!

DND

“Spicy… like a rat.”

“You asked the whales name?” “I’m just thoughtful like that.”

“Always check your bonfires for hedgehogs.”

“Needless to say Cthulhu is pleased and lunch is ruined”

“Oh no the cube! Not the cube!”

“He looks like dob but somehow evil and sexy”

“Nooooo… my mojo…”

“Oh you totally give the baby a dagger!” “That’s parenting 101”

“I flinch greasily.”

“Guys be real are we murder hobo’s?”

“I just wanna say I’m really proud of the amount of murder we’ve done.”

“Have you heard of the guild of the national trust?”

“Oo man I can’t wait to get redemption let’s kill everyone.”

“Do you have pamphlets?” “Let’s bore them to death!”

“Decisive action: throw that cat.”

“I have a moral objection but I’m going to let it happen because this seems cool.”

“🎵it’s getting hot in here. And they will all explode🎵”

“I lick the book and I am pleased”

“I know a lot of my plans revolve around watching dob sleep”

“Shut your filthy mouth Corazon”

“Let’s have a spooky sleepover.”

“Nature is beautiful.” “It sure was”

“+4! +2! +2! NUMBERS!”

“It’s not on fire or anything!” “Not yet, give me time!”

“We’re gonna have a sleepover in this crypt!”

“It couldn’t have been me-meant? If it wasn’t already… broked. That’s what I’ve always said”

“🎵maaaagic hand! Come out of my real hand!🎵”

“Wear whatever you want! Your bones, probably.”

“Their prudence hat”

“Is it orphans? You gotta tell us if it is.” “Ah. It’s orphans boss.”

“Skeletons… AHHHHHH”

“I love these loophole skeletons!”

“I would like to attempt to cast mend on the orphans”

“We just want less orphan juice”

“I’m imagining you making a snowman out of orphan paste”

“Oooo Skeletons be dexterous”

“We’re all team skeleton just some of us have flesh on top”

“I never liked you Kevin”

“Guys I’m not not in trouble”

“And then I turn the internal heat dial to cremation”

“BETTER OUT THAN IN DOES NOT APPLY TO ORGANS”

“MY ORGANS!”

“Do you want a vomit hug?”

“I’m putting my foot down on the husks.” “But then they’d just burst!”

“Is it bad that bear me wants to eat the husks? No I won’t I’ll be good”

“And I’m trying desperately to remain eye contact with HER, and not look at you guys swimming around in sandwiches”

“It’s in runes or something what is that?” “That’s a seven.”

“The consequences! They’re here again!”

“Meowwww” “I DONT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!”

“Awh. And I’ve got his BOOTS!”

“Dob what did I tell you about necromancy?”

“Let’s put capitalism in the lake!”

“We can always claim it’s the fireworks show!” “NOT IF WE’RE DEAD!”

“Dogs are bound in skin!”

“MERILWEN THERES A BEAR! GO TURN INTO A BEAR OR FIGHT IT… or marry it… or something”

“Have we tried to befriend the footprints?” “Talk to the footprints!”

“Two very impulsive boi’s”

“Grease man from the ocean”

“Respectfully yeet him off the mountain.” “A somber yeet”

“If I was in something for 2 years”

“I saw the holes on the front and thought ‘that must be all the holes’ but then I looked on the back and there was ANOTHER HOLE THERE!”

“What are you dreaming about?” “Salmon.”

“Oh no they’ll take over the world with inexpensive furniture!”

“Break his spirit.” “And his back 😈”

“3 dimensional chess is just chess!”

“AUGH. OH YES. BISQUE 😩”

“What’s in this drawer? Dob? Oh no that’s a paperclip.” 

“Person in charge of the Prudence mech”

“🎵yees I’m the best at thunderwave turns out!🎵”

“My shin!” “My Shin!” “… our Shin.”

“DID YOU JUST SUGGEST MERILWEN COMMIT AUTOCANNIBALISIM IN BEAR FORM?”

“I’m just a chicken walking around with a flameblade”

“🎵Eleanor rigbee, lived in a hive because she was a bee. Whooedy whee!🎵”

“The pirate. Didn’t. Say that.”

“This is the energy in the room we’re all going to regret later” “says that of the orphanage.” “I regretted it later!”

“Though he could discover spoons at any point”

“Phase one: walk to crime. Phase two: do crime”

“I’ll just do it and be a legend”

“In a way we’re already married in a very deep and legal way.” “For tax purposes.”

“Why is there so much tentacle milk here?”

“You just hear anarchy noises from out the window”

“We’re running out of time before he murders us accidentally with an idiom” “with beans”

“I’m buying ecstasy from an owl?”

“The sounds of muffled pirate violence”

“She might just destroy the world, which is where we keep all our stuff!”

“I faint.” “Okay dob’s having a short rest” “OH YEAH!”

“Thick orange hot water”

“She’s got the cutest little forces of darkness 🥰”

“As the Druid, no.” “As the dm, INSPIRATION!”

“I cast shatter on the only planet we have”

“I cast fracking”

“WE. ARE. COASTAL!”

“The eldrich being Flannery”

“We’re fracking landlords”

“Now we leave you and see if you go buduhduhduhduh”

“Cattle go missing, we never find out what happens to all the Harris’s” “season over.”

“It’s practically a victimless crime, unless there’s a victim, in which case hopefully it’s a hard to trace crime”

“I grease Merilwen to give her the best chance”

“WHY AM I DYING?”

“Because you told me to piss off!” “So you did THIS?” “yeah” “I HAVE MINUTES TO LIVE!” 

“How’s the shat?”

“I cast mending on our friendship 🥺”

“How does a jackle… lift a bunch of cars?” “I don’t know.” “You jack ‘em all.” *weird laughter*

“Yes. No more pain where you’re going friend. No, you’re not very nice actually.”

“Well, solved the Richard problem!” “But what about the Dob problem”

“It’s very demeaning, so okay.”

“Well no Millie or ori that is obviously not okay. Little idiot.”

“Oh I HATE nature”

“Who wants in on my corpse sled idea?”

“Dob.” *quiet laughter* “oh no.”

“I give them an appraising look as if sizing up their corpses”

“I am literally everyone else in the world which means I am the best at sighing crying sad goodbying to my plot, the npc’s, the sanctity of lore…”

“These patrons aren’t gonna lick themselves!”

“Ohhhh it’s a sex thing.”

“Rule 3 no kink shaming.” “Damn right.”

“He drifts out the door… to go find something to kiss.”

“WAIT! I’ve had a thought! I want to kiss the dragon man.”

“Well. You’ve effed this right up Dob.”

“Well, if you’re dreaming about that, it’s probably out to get you.” “Every time you sleep, it gets a little bit closer.”

“It is always agonising Johnny!”

“Let me use my bonus action to slip in my own grease”

“All things must drink. I say wisely, and inaccurately”

“You take 4 points of… becoming soup damage”

“It occurs to all of you, and pardon my infernal, this is a shit idea.”

“Why do i have find steed if it’s not a rodeo?”

“I cough up some hemp and rope.” “Oh perfectly horrifying! Sure, yeah.”

“We never elected a leader!” “How could you talk to your leader like that?”

“I like turning into a cat all the time, the problem is I can’t do it.”

“that horny crew member sticks his head out to watch”

“So it’s slightly uncomfortable… and you outlive all your lovers… sounds like a good thing!”

“I wish to arrest Cthulhu now start screaming”

BLADES IN THE DARK

“Sir we’re in an antique shop.”

“What a great excuse to do some crime, though!”

“Nothing bad has ever happened to me in my entire life, I don’t think it’s going to start now!”

“Is it meant to be on fire? Because it’s on fire.”

“ITS A MASTERCLASS! It’s not a masterclass…”

“Classic squiffy, what a lad.”

“Hey! I need you to do me a favour! Well I say a favour, I’m compelling you.”

“We do a literal hitman, as in you run up, and hit the man.”

“He’ll live, but not well.”

“Spinning tops in places you don’t want them”

“I want a ghost who’s obsessed with me!”

“Everyone’s going out the front door! I’m just gonna set the house on fire!”

“Here’s what happens Barnaby, you glorious liability.”

“Have you heard about this thing called a union?” “… Let’s montage the rest of this conversation”

“Roll me for ‘Dave? Dave!’”

“Barbaby and workers rights are on the opposite end on the political spectrum”

“It’s not apoplectic with rage, it’s apoplectic with being right.”

“Fresh fish!” “Lovely crimes!”

“It’s going terribly here in the present! Maybe it went better in the past!” “Let’s retreat to the safety of the past.”

“I didn’t want to taste the sweat of the poor in the air!”

“So you want to be a nice, clean, sanitised butcher?”

“It’s like riding a bike” “a violent bike” “it’s like punching a bike”

“I came here to study ghosts, not become one!” “Imagine how much study you could do if you became one!” “I can’t hold pens!”

“The gilded idiot”

“Hands in the middle. Aaaaand dead Barnaby!”

“I’m choking a guy out… with my thighs”

“I smile. In a way that  conveys limitless rage”

“I do not want to be traumatised because of archiving!”

“Won’t someone think of the molluscs?”

“Lilly and Zilly on a wedding adventure”

“Generally I judge things, but sometimes I choke them unconscious”

“The tiny urchins really wanted us to do it”

“No one tell him he has NO SOUL”

“Who is this anthropomorphic mouse?” (It was a child)

“Sorry I tried to fix it with fish”

“I’m going to start a clock that the wonderful mechanical man is working on without any of you”

“Are these children going to be okay?” “We’re they okay to begin with?”

“Stop making out with that brick!” “I’m not- do you know what making out is, Edvard?”

“I let my hatred of stairs get the better of me”

“I’m furious at my forearm.”

“It’s a piece of trash! Looks like something Edvard would make!”

“Mechanical man parts”

“Moving on briefly from infanticide, good job, I just asked you for your name”

“A healing cloak is quite hard to fill so I thought stuff that, I’ve acquired 2 giant goats”

DEADLANDS

“How old are you?” “Old enough. Are you old enough to make good decisions?” 

“No more digging graves for neat, I’m gonna be putting people in graves for money!”

“I had a mule once.”

“That’s adulthood. Being angry all the time, but pushing it down until it’s the right time.”

“Have you ever met someone in your life who doesn’t like jerky?”

“I REMEMBER IT BEING A SIN”

“Let’s hope they’re extremely religious”

“Yeah well Andy’s lying, Andy wants us to fail.”

“I like to drink milk after I shoot two men in the throat”

“Very well then, Mr… not free”

“As you pass by the door, it does clip on the brim of your hat and it falls over your eyes and you can’t see anything.”

“Okay, okay.” *silence* “AAAAAAAH”

“I look at the other one, which seems like his spirit it hasn’t been broken yet 😡”

“I’m saying it nicely but in my head im like: I will kill you later.”

“Not trying to be rude, why do you smell so bad? I’m not trying very hard”

“Contracted late-stage tuberculosis. Got better.”

“Animal that’s been jerked”

“Tell me your life story”

“JERRY WHY”

“Horses can play, and you’re worried about if they can sit?”

“I’ve got a d8, but it’s now -2, because I’m DEAD”

*stabs someone in the eye* “oh sorry, I simply stopped paying attention!”

“Heck. Furthermore, dang.”

“One of the strangulation ones.” “Oh fun!”

“Is sharp rope a thing? WELL SHARPEN IT.”

“Sticky mc bang bang!”

“It was a terrible crime, I cut my lawn and i cut it too short. Anyway I’m to be hanged.”

“The cell is now swarming with ants.” “Yay!”

“Murder, for example, would be a no no!”

“He’s the same old Nate he’s just soft and cold”

[the-last-teabender]

I've seen (and heard about) a lot of Oxventure posts that are talking about how Oxventurers Guild was bad but Wyrdwood is good.

One - I hate to see two bad bitches pitted against each other.

Two - Speaking from experience, you can't be a table like Wyrdwood without having been a table like the Oxventurers Guild.

Did people not know the rules? Yes. Did people play suboptimally? Yes. Did Johnny bend rules and consequences to move things along? Yes. But people seem to forget that the first Oxventure campaign started with basically zero previous experience. We were watching people learning.

Yesterday I was talking with @randomthunk about this, and I compared watching Oxventure from beginning to present like reading The Dark Tower. Reading The Gunslinger and watching that story progress over seven books gave me confidence as a writer. You can start imperfect. You can make mistakes. You can be less than your best as you're getting your feet under you, and a willingness and enthusiasm to do that will take you to greatness. Plus, it's a story of an author evolving as much as it's a story of Roland Deschain going to the Tower.

I think many many other actual plays have given people unrealistic expectations, where Oxventure (as I've said before) brought me back to gaming. And as much as I think a person could come to Wyrdwood new and love it, the Oxventurers Guild campaign makes what comes next so much more meaningful. We've seen what each player does well across the original and side campaigns, and we got to see that because of the freedom the first campaign gave them. Now we get to see those natural talents paired with an understanding of the system (which we were already seeing in Blades and Deadlands, but now we have a 1 to 1 comparison).

In my first stint in gaming 20 years ago, I didn't have the freedom at my original table to learn and make mistakes. You got it right or you got mocked. I have good tables I love now because I began seeking out tables that reminded me of Oxventure: willing to go on tangents, willing to help each other, okay with fudging things on the fly if it preserved our good time. I'm a better player now because I had those experiences.

tl;dr your taste is your taste and some things are naturally gonna hit you better than others, but writing off the Oxventurers Guild because the mechanics weren't as tight is missing the entire point of how this group has evolved.