#that's the campaign world we did the oneshot in

[deer-with-a-stick]

Wildest shit happens in D&D man.

Alright, story time.

There was a D&D night for fun and to introduce newbies to the game. I ended up with a slightly more experienced group but they took pre-made auto-generated character sheets.

We ended up with Normal Human Artificer whose part of a guild (I ended up tying the backstory to the illegal Artificer Cult), a Centaur Hermit who is afraid of civilization, an Orc Fighter who hates civilization, and a Half-Orc Barbarian raised by wolves and who has an alcohol addiction.

The oneshot happens in Waterdeep, the fucking New York City of the Forgotten Realms. They go to a bakery to try and find clues as to where this important guy (the Beggar King) is. First thing that happens is the Barbarian gets up onto two feet and fucking spartan-kicks the door open. They kill one ghoul (Barbarian gets half their face bitten off, retaliates with a Nat 20 bite, and rips the ghoul’s throat out). Then the centaur picks up the second and ends up fucking adopting it and getting it addicted to Raspberry Danishes instead of cow blood and humanoid flesh.

Then they get ambushed by the BBEG’s men. Ghoul flies at the leader, and with another Nat 20 because my metal dice loves combat, rips the guy’s head off. Fighter splits another guard in half with ANOTHER Nat 20 (the dice aren’t weighed, we just ended up being D&D Game Georg. Our Barbarian actually couldn’t stop rolling twos earlier and during the ghoul combat, the ghoul that got adopted ended up rolling three Nat 1s in a row). The centaur tries to pick up a third guy only to get shield bashed in the head. Third guy gets his neck snapped because the Neutral Evil Orc Fighter jumped on his neck. The party proceeds to traumatize the last guard there for several rounds by shooting arrows at him (and missing) as well as hurling a fucking Great-axe at him (courtesy of the Barbarian, who also missed). He tries to climb over the roof, fails Acrobatics, falls to the ground where the Fighter proceeds to shield bash HIM, shattering the guy’s jaw, and the Barbarian ground-pounds his diaphragm, killing the poor guy. Throughout this whole thing, the Artificer is just standing there with his bow and five Cherry Danishes in his hands (since he wants to try and train the ghoul to attack people).

They make their way to the BBEG’s ship, and somehow, despite the highest Charisma score there being fucking TWELVE, convince the guy guarding the gangplank that the party + ghoul are the Orc’s pets. Artificer finds who fucking pistols and the Centaur somehow manages to climb up to the crow’s nest using the fucking ROPE RIGGING. I made the mistake of saying that there was a barrel of rum, and the Barbarian strapped the >400 pound barrel to their back. Somehow, they make their way to the brig and talk their way past the guards (genuinely don’t know how they managed to pass so many Charisma checks). They convince the guards to close the door because “uh... the rum is for interrogation techniques? it might get loud.” Then the artificer gets like an 18 for performance and just starts screaming from behind the door and the guards run away (despite the Barbarian getting a Nat 1 Stealth to try and pour the rum out of the barrel). They fucking shove the prisoner, the Beggar King they’re supposed to rescue, into the fucking barrel Bilbo Baggins style, and with more charisma checks (Nat 1 from the Orc to convince the gangplank guard that the barrel was another pet but a 19 from the Artificer claiming orders from the Captain to transport materials) they fucking left with the Beggar King passed out in a fucking barrel.

Like, they skipped the boss fight, they skipped every possible fight in the ship, half fought the first one because a ghoul got fucking ADOPTED and I-

This was so fucking fun. Play D&D yall. You might meet some of the greatest people in the world and form the greatest memories in your life.

[ihaveonlymydreams]

🎲

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not telling my friend I don't want to play DND with her?

I (17M) am a player in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign (NOTE: it is not actually DND, I am just saying it for simplicity's sake. If anything sounds off, that's why. Either way, it's TTRPG, and both games have the same system, although they aren't anywhere near similar to DND gameplay-wise. It's very roleplay focused.) with a few of my friends (all 17-20F: Viola, Korrina, Valerie, and Olympia). Viola is our DM, and I have so much fun every time we play, with no intents on quitting because of this.

Olympia just like... fucking sucks though, to be honest? Like, I just hate playing with this chick. She's always asking for extra bonuses on rolls because she's just such a good player (no one else does it, Viola allows it though), she actively started PVP with me, she physically disabled my character in said PVP and I had to do chaos control (I did not want to have my character be disabled, if I did I would have a disabled character, but I failed a roll against her in this fight so I had to have my character go on a side-quest to fix it: I would be more fine with it if it was Viola, but another player? Really?), and she's just not really funny when she talks about the campaign outside of the sessions (I know, it's a little personal). She gets really upset when we mention this one thing we all like to the point of taking inspiration from it for characters and NPCs because she doesn't get it but she refuses to try the thing so we just have to not talk about it with her, and overall she just... isn't enjoyable to be around.

I know I'm gonna have people in the comments say "just tell her that you don't like her now! You sound awful, you should quit," etc etc, but hear me out. I am a player. Since the DM is Viola, and Olympia and Viola are having fun, I don't feel like I should say anything. It's the DM's story, and as a mere character in the story I can't have any say in the format, especially since I was the one that invited Olympia to the group (I made a casual offer to my whole friend group over a school group chat and both Olympia and Korrina responded, so I had to include both of them), and we've been playing this campaign since August.

One of our players had to cancel on us a week ago as of writing this, and so I decided to run a oneshot based off of a campaign I've been wanting to do (first time DMer, I wanted to try it out). The players were Viola, Korrina, and Olympia, and it was actually really fun! I wanted to wait for Viola's campaign to end before I actually started playing my campaign, but that wasn't going to happen in a while, so I had decided to run it then.

I don't want Olympia anywhere near my actual campaign, though. I'm planning on letting my friend (Drasna, 18F) join, as well as anyone else who shows interest, along with Viola, Korrina, and Valerie. But as you may know, Olympia is insufferable to me, and as DM I feel like I have the right to deny her from playing with me.

She still played in the oneshot though, and was... very excited for it. I am aware I am the only one with beef here. Olympia keeps on PMing me about her character, asking about the world, and she's really interested in the world and the format of it. Her character's nice even if a little similar to one of the main plot NPCs I have, but as I've mentioned, I really want to cut her out when the campaign gets rolling. The only reason I couldn't for the oneshot is because we are actively in the middle of a campaign and everyone would think I'm being weird and things would be tense for the rest of the campaign. I can't just tell Olympia to her face "hey, I hate playing with you actually. Go home, fuck off."

I feel like I treated Olympia fairly when we played (she didn't do anything drastic, at least), but I don't know how my negative feelings on her are going to impact the campaign. I don't want to have an inbalance in the characters and how they're treated.

AITA for leading her on to make sure things don't get awkward during Viola's campaign, even though I have no intent of changing my mind on not having her as a player?

What are these acronyms?

[musicinherhead]

M9 Reunion thoughts:

- I was woefully unprepared for Beau finding Imogen attractive. I am deceased.

- Fearne and Laudna would love the Blooming Grove so much

- Beauyasha in an open relationship discussion feeds fanwriters for moons to come

- I miss Veth but LUC

- I need a convergence of all three parties bc: Beau, Yasha, Imogen, Fearne. Jester and Fearne. Fearne and Caduceus. Fjord and Chet meeting. Scanlan and Jester meeting. Vex being endlessly amused. Percy being endlessly annoyed. Keyleth and Caduceus and Pike meeting. Yasha and Grog arm wrestling.

- Just imagine how worried all the regular Sending receivers are rn at the sudden peace and quiet in their minds :(

- Aggy was hilarious. Does anyone know if he lasted long than Spurt??

- Beauyasha moments for the win!

- YASHA DOING 160 POINTS OF DAMAGE IN ONE HIT?!!!!

- okay, but Caleb having to relive that trauma made me so upset. If someone did that with my mother I’d burn the world around them to ash

- is Essek okay?

- Cad’s Divine Intervention was AMAZING

- Luc was amazing! The Enlarge on the T-Rex was epic. Great dnd choice.

- Laura’s dice mostly love Imogen but hate Jester when it matters 😭 but Marisha’s dice hate Laudna and love Beau lol

- FORJESTER PROPOSAL IM SCREAMING CRYING EATING DRYWALL

Final thoughts: now that the M9 knows of the threat ruidis poses, I hope we get more cameos in campaign 3 with them. Imogen deserves the chance to meet Beauyasha. And so does Fearne. I hope we get a wedding oneshot sooon! I’d also love to see more of Luc. I was hoping we’d see the Wildmother send both Fjord and Caduceus the same warning the Changebringer and Dawnfather sent FCG and Deanna, hopefully that’s expanded soon.

[canonkiller]

Loving your D&D stuff.

thank you! however you are going to get a long answer because you have opened an opportunity for me to list things, which is my favorite

very few of the campaigns I'm in / have latched on to that my friends play are actually in D&D any more, for various reasons (primarily 1. WOTC sucks, 2. the system is not really designed for the kind of thing we like the most, which is "impactful character choices," and 3. "why play skyrim as a farming sim"). The games I've been a full player in are, aside from 5e:

Eberron / An Airship Is A Horse That Loves You is in Pathfinder 2e! We started in D&D 5e, which is why there are some semi-homebrewed imports, but it's a very similar system to 5e in gameplay PLUS Pathbuilder is a desktop and app program that will automatically put together character sheets for you, which is arguably the worst part of 5e. It's great, and I highly recommend considering it as an alternative to 5e if you're wanting something that still has the combat rolls and everything but also has more innate design for doing shit as a character. ALSO also there's a ton of included assistive devices, which range from normal stuff like wheelchairs and hearing aids to specifically magical stuff like my favorite: a wheelchair that has legs and can kill. Derien is my PC in this one, fresh out of the oven.

The only other actually active PC status I have had in this group was in an Eyes On The Prize oneshot! EOTP is a fake-marriage game (made by @iraprince !) with flexible setting / character guidelines that's played with a deck of cards, and I highly recommend it for shenanigans. My character was Moonlight Saidluck, a bug centaur fae who accidentally let a human into the fairy world and was pretending this newcomer was their partner and definitely not a human who had accidentally entered the fairy world. I played the one shot with two other couples, which did make it run overtime, but it was a delight. We also had very little trouble playing remotely, with one person in charge of cards and points tracking on an online draw-party style page.

The other games I'm more a spectator in, and then occasionally contribute ideas like fucked up boats or extended debates about magical darkness and the water cycle. That big list of alternative systems is ~

Persona: The Tabletop RPG (PersonaBS)

Quest (Luxknights)

Kids on Bikes (Streams of Consciousness)

Lancer

Beam Saber (AFI, but we haven't been calling it that)

Girl by Moonlight (MMM / Magical Girls)

Cyberpunk TTRPG

Numenera

Monster of the Week

aaand probably more that I'm forgetting because we're. Quite prolific about our play pretend time (and I've got a few concepts brewing that I still really want to nail down - Tanglethorn, the unnamed one about the sinkhole and Bad Hand may grace this list someday if I really buckle down to iron out the wrinkles)

I'm glad you're enjoying my little guys though! I just love a chance to get people into other TTRPG systems, especially when most of them are easier to learn and play than D&D and there's such a wide range of options.

Here's a little Moonlight png, as a reward for reading

[biohazard-4ever]

What's your overall opinion about RE6?

Personally it's my least favorite but the main criticism I see is for the excessive action in the campaigns but I didn't see that as a problem as such.

RE6 is awful because it did the complete opposite of what Resident Evil players usually are after:

Here is the: HOW TO MAKE A GOOD RE GAME

ISOLATION! The main character needs to be ALONE . No more Soldier boy jumping down choppers to destroy everything. NO COD. ENOUGH

Mechanism to kill/fight bosses. A scenario capable to help you. The metal pipes against Saddler in RE4OG and the fight against William in RE2Remake. Just having firepower is not enough, you need to use your brain.

Enemies capable to ONESHOT you like the Plant-Zombies in RE2R and Dr.Salvador in RE4 (RE4OG Style! NO Parry!). Those make you run for your life!

Lack of ammo. In RE4R style. They make you SLIGHTLY uncomfortable with your current situation, but without really taking from you the possibility to fight back.

If using old characters (Leon, Claire...) do it RE4 style and RErevelations 2 style. Put them in a scenario where just them being experienced in the chaos, is not enough to guarantee you'll escape this hell alive. Because you have someone with you who is not capable to fight back. You have someone you need to protect.

Enemies with LORE! RE4R files were AMAZING and the photos, the ending credits... All that helps. The atmosphere is NEEDED. Give me the BEST atmosphere!

Resident Evil 6 does not have personality OR any of the listed above. It is a game that abused of the QTE (even to start a fucking car?! Holy shit). It abused of the linearity. No files for you to find and read so it could bring you more in depth to the world around you...

Resident Evil 6 does not INVITE YOU to come and stay with it. Lack of memorable bosses (Memorably GOOD boss fights. All we remember is how awful they are). And we have an entire QTE boss in RE6... The shark or whatever is its' name in RE6. Leon's campaign.

The boss fights never feel like a boss fight. Instead, feels like a cutscene you're watching and can not skip because you have to press a specific command so you won't be oneshot.

RE6 is bad in every possible way. The fact it is mostly OKAY among fans is because the CO-OP really helps with it. You have fun not because the game is good, but because playing with friends is ALWAYS good.

But when a Resident Evil game is better when in CO-OP... You already know it is because it is a BAD game...

You can end the RE game campaign without shooting a single bullet, Only using Leon's Kicks. This is bullshit...

The fear we have while playing a Resident Evil game, is because if surrounded, you are hopeless. You staying close to the enemy is NOT a wise decision. No one here thinks Resident Evil is a scary game because: "Zombies".

It is a scary game because sometimes things run out of your control! The enemies close in on you. Your partner (Ashley or Moira) are defenseless and you need to fight for them, maybe you shouldn't be fighting because you are already low on ammo, but now you don't have a choice...

OH NO! DR.Salvador is coming now YOU AND ASHLEY are fucked up! RUN! YOU DON'T HAVE AMMO!

SHIT! ASHLEY GOT CAUGHT! GO BACK, GO B---! NO DON'T! DR. SALVADOR IS COMING YOUR WAY!

In Resident Evil 6 you are always with the upper hand. You can play it on its MAX difficulty but the I.A of your partner will drag you down. Trust in me. It will become a very annoying experience pretty fast.

[atamascolily]

pmmm oneshots by subject

Just for fun, I put together a guide for my Madoka Magica oneshots on A03, sorted roughly by subject matter/theme. All are 7K or less, most in the 1-3K range. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list and will probably be instantly out of date, but can still serve as a good general reference. Enjoy!

inspired by art

Curation - The Law of Cycles isn't a person. It's an institution.

No Exit (The Nighthawks Remix) - Based on Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

Balancing Act - Kyouko and Madoka take an unusual route to find Sayaka's witch, unaware Homura is watching from the shadows.

Marked - Junko Kaname invites Homura on a family trip to a local hot springs resort. Intrigued by Homura's refusal, Junko investigates--revealing a secret of her own along the way.

HomuMado Bittersweet Angst

The Night Parade of One Hundred Witches - Once a year on the anniversary of Walpurgisnacht, the streets of Mitakihara are home to a most unusual parade.

Flying Home - Soulmate Goose AU.

Memento - Mami does her best to help when Homura's grief over Madoka manifests in bouts of coughed-up spider lilies, though it isn't enough.

surreal weirdness

Orrery - Homura's apartment is out of this world.

Return to Sender - The epic story of Homura vs. junk mail.

Projections - Homura redecorates her apartment.

Splice - There's someone else out there besides Homura with control over time. The question is, what does she want? Scene 0 AU from before Scene 0 was released.

Witches

Absentia - As Homura investigates the mystery of Walpurgisnacht, one question eludes her: where is the witch's grief seed?

Strange Loop - The Stage-Constructing Witch narrates a familiar story with an unfamiliar twist.

Junk - Mitakihara's new magical girl duo has their work cut out for them when the Hoarding Witch manifests on the Kazamino City border.

Sticky Fingers - Kyouko needs Mami's help to get out of a sticky situation when a routine witch-hunt goes awry.

Trompe-l'oeil - Mami plays a deadly game of hide and seek against an elusive witch inside a reality-bending art gallery.

tea and sympathy - An invitation to visit the Dress-Up Witch means you will never be lonely again.

Fun and Games

Loosely connected series of one shots in a modern AU where the characters are playing an RPG based on the original series.

Fun and Games - It's another eventful session of the Puella Magi: Magica RPG: Mami one-shots a witch with her Tiro Finale attack, a new player joins the party, and Sayaka fails an important roll with devastating consequences.

She Who Fights Monsters - Kyubey convinces the gang to reconvene for a new campaign of the Puella Magi: Magica RPG, but all bets are off when Homura realizes the GM is up to his old tricks.

What Goes Around - Things get weird after Homura ousts Kyubey as GM of the ongoing Puella Magi: Magica RPG. Well, weirder, anyway. Homura and Mami Roommate Shenanigans

Inspired by Mitakihara Anti-materials spinoff manga. Domestic fluff AUs.

Moving Day - Homura moves in with Mami.

Soba ni Iru (Soba Noodles By Your Side) - Homura's first night in Mami's apartment.

Partnership - "I figured we could both use some tea," Tomoe said by way of greeting. "You had difficulty sleeping again, didn't you?"

Dirty Laundry - Homura finds a creative use for the washing machine.

Mami Character Studies

Childish Things - Mami stumbles across a box of childhood memorabilia.

half-life - Mami wished to live, but she didn't give any thought to what that life might look like, and now she's paying the price.

Twenty Facts About Mami Tomoe - Fragments from a tragedy in slow motion.

Fireflies - While searching for witches, Mami has a wondrous experience at an isolated shrine.

Fluff and Crack

Wash Cycle - "I like it," Sayaka said honestly. "It's just not what I expected heaven to be like, that's all."

The Adventure of the Sapphire Soul Gem - "Huh?" Sayaka said, unable to believe what she had just witnessed. "Did that goose just eat my soul gem?" Kyouko was faster on the uptake. "Quick, grab it!"

Final Form - Madoka and her friends get an unexpected glimpse of the Incubator life cycle.

Mermaid in My Tub - Kyouko intervenes in time to save Sayaka from becoming a witch--sort of. Now Sayaka's stuck living in the bathtub in Mami's apartment with a mermaid tail, and Kyouko is determined to make the best of it.

Sayaka Miki and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day

out of order - This place is a dead end, but so is she, and it's not like Sayaka has anywhere else to go at the moment, so she might as well make the most of it.

descent - The witch is still out there calling for its next victim, though not for much longer now that Sayaka's here. She's close enough to transform into her true self and leave this crude matter behind.

tainted - Caught up in despair, Sayaka rapidly loses touch with reality.

Miscellaneous Crossovers

No knowledge of the other fandom is needed.

Death Comes for the Incubator (x Sandman). Kyubey confronts his own mortality at last.

Memories of Somebody (x Bleach). A chance meeting between Homura and Ichigo reveals unexpected connections. Post-series (PMMM) and post-Memories of Nobody and Fade to Black (Bleach).

Palimpsest (x Sandman). A garden, a maze, a mysterious hooded figure. A book of pages written and erased again and again. In between timelines, Homura Akemi comes face to face with Destiny.

The Immortal Dragon's Disciple (x The Way of the Househusband). Homura Akemi finds an unlikely mentor in ex-yakuza turned househusband Tatsu Kuroda.

Good Morning, Ms. Saotome (x Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei).  Junko Kaname sets up Ms. Saotome on a date with an eccentric teacher. Madoka has a front-row seat for what comes next.

xxxHolic-inspired Fusion AUs

No prior knowledge of xxxHolic is required.

asynchronous - The Dimension Witch dwells in a shop specializing in the granting of wishes... for a price.

a butterfly dreaming - Mami's perfect life comes to an end....but is the person who wished for this really so bad?

life in fantasy (the butterfly dreaming remix) - Mami Tomoe never, ever listens. Once again, Homura is left to cleans up the mess. Whumptober 2021

Cui Bono? - Mami wakes up in Homura's apartment, surprised and grateful to have survived her disastrous encounter with the Dessert Witch. But her host's contradictory behavior raises an important question: what exactly is Homura getting out of this?

Careful What You Wish For - Trapped in the Box Witch's labyrinth and paralyzed with guilt over Mami's death, Madoka is rescued by the most unexpected person imaginable.

Rude Awakening - Homura's latest fight with Mami might be a dream, but what awaits her upon waking is all too real.

Sticks and Stones - After a fight between Sayaka and an unknown opponent ends with the former grievously injured, Mami reveals an unexpected connection between them. Null Magical Girl Weirdness

Unlikely to make sense if you're unfamiliar with the Null Magical Girl light novel.

Null and Void - Fourteen-year-old Kosane's attempt to contract with Kyubey unexpectedly fails.

null thoughts, head empty - While waiting for the space-time collapse, Kosane and Kyubey discuss Incubator biology and the nature of the human soul.

Schrodinger's Incubator - The only thing more impressive than solving the perfect locked-room murder mystery is preventing it from happening in the first place. Miscellaneous

Tracks - Madoka searches for Sayaka along the train tracks.

Inventory - Homura sorts through the contents of her shield.

Family Business - This time, Madoka and Sayaka are rescued from a witch's labyrinth by the Tomoe twins, a magical sibling duo gifted with a flair for the dramatic, deadly aim with rifles, and fabulous fashion sense. It still ends badly for everyone.

Gingerbread - Nagisa and Mami make gingerbread together.

Parallels - Despite everything they have in common, Mami and Homura never quite connect. Then again, parallel lines never meet, except maybe at infinity.

Power Sources - Madoka and Sayaka discuss the topics they chose for their science essays, unaware of the relevance to their future lives.

Five Things That Probably Never Happened in Any Timeline (And One That Definitely Did) - Visions of a kinder, gentler magical girl show that never was. [based on the opening credits]

[sevilemar]

Do you remember my first post as a not-quite-yet GM? Someone recently gifted me a like on that post, and as I was reading it over again, I found myself smiling quite a bit. We are about a year and a half into our campaign now, so let me give you an update:

- The players will do what they like, but they actually need a bit of trust to get there.

At the beginning, they were all very respectful of what they thought was 'The GM's plot'. The thing is, I didn't really had a plot back then, still mostly don't, so there were a few situations where I just had to pretend I did, and yes, it was exactly what you thought it was, how did you guess?

These days, my players feel a lot more comfortable to just go where the story takes them, and sometimes make their own story. I want them to do even more of it, so my work here is not done yet.

In the meantime, I work out plot points from session to session. I have a general direction, but no idea how we'll get there. It stresses me out a lot, because I have to figure out a way to progress after every session, and I really am not good at that (or if I am, it takes a lot of work).

- Session zero is still important, as is regular feedback. The most important though is dealing with any conflicts that may arise openly, and before a session, not after.

- Building encounters got easier over time, both because my PCs are now level 4, and because I have more experience now. PC death is still scary as fuck to me (we had one to this day), and I have learned that it is best to leave it up to the player if they want to roll up a new character, or if we need to find a way of resurrecting their old one.

I still think I handled the death too leniently; there should have been more consequences than just a block on their abilities and spells for a few hours.

- The funny thing about not letting Forever-GMs taking over your game is that sometimes, you need to let Forever-GMs take over your game^^

I collaborated with two of my players to date, one taking over GMing for a side quest, and one with whom I co-GMed for a bit. It is fun, makes the players more invested, and it also takes some stress away from me.

- My track record with safety tools is not good, tbh. I did lines and veils at the beginning, and introduced the x card and signs, but nobody has used them yet. I also find myself straying very, very close to one of the players fears a few time, and I couldn't find a way around it. Still need to get better with safety tools.

- Since we started our campaign, I got involved in four more campaigns or extended oneshots, two of them as a direct result of the people at my table. I have played a few oneshots in DnD and other systems, and made characters for a few more. Suffice it to say, no DnD class is completely foreign to me anymore, and most of them I have played or planned already.

- Eberron is still a lot of work. So much so that any oneshot I run also takes place there, because I am not a world building person, and learning one world is quite enough for me. I still discover new things every session, and I am fortunate that one of my other campaigns where I am a player also takes place in Eberron. This way, I'm learning about the world without having to learn the world.

- I found good ressources, kobold fight club for encounters, wikidot, etc. If you are interested, PM me and I give you links privately.

- I have gone with drawing over printing, mostly because I do not own a printer, and the print shops are not open at 1 am at night, when I get my craziest ideas for the session tomorrow.

- We started out with paper minis, but as you know, I got into painting minis, and so I find myself increasingly either making encounters for specific minis, or reskinning monster stats to fit the minis I just finished. It's a lot of fun.

- I still don't have a list of names. I should really do something about that.

[twwpress]

Weekly Press Briefing #93: March 31st - April 6th

Welcome back to the Weekly Press Briefing, where we bring you highlights from The West Wing fandom each week, including new fics, ongoing challenges, and more! This briefing covers everything posted from March 31 - April 6, 2024. Did we miss something? Let us know; you can find our contact info at the bottom of this briefing!

Challenges/Prompts:

There are no open challenges or events on our radar this week. Do you have a challenge or event you’d like us to promote or know of one we’re missing? Be sure to get in touch with us! Contact info is at the bottom of this briefing.

This Week in Canon:

Welcome back to This Week in Canon, where we revisit moments in The West Wing that occurred on these dates during the show’s run.

Season 1, Episode 18: Six Meetings Before Lunch aired on April 5, 2000.

Season 2, Episode 18: 17 People aired on April 4, 2001.

Season 3, Episode 17: Stirred aired on April 3, 2002.

Season 4, Episode 19: Angel Maintenance aired on April 2, 2003.

Season 5, Episode 18: Access aired on March 31, 2004.

Season 6, Episode 22: 2162 Votes aired on April 6, 2005.

Photos/Videos:

Here’s what was posted from March 31 – April 6:

Allison Janney posted a still from this week’s Palm Royale episode. 

Allison Janney posted a video of herself dancing on the set of Palm Royale, along with a shout out to her hairstylist. 

Janel Moloney posted a photo of the Fortnite-themed Durr Burgers she made for her sons. 

Josh Malina posted screenshots of his wedding gift to another Josh Malina. Josh Malina posted a photo of himself impersonating Bart Simpson. 

Peter James Smith posted photos from rehearsal for his upcoming play, Nora, which previews April 21. 

Rob Lowe posted a photo of his dogs looking at the ocean. 

Donna Moss Daily: March 31 | April 1 | April 2 | April 3 | April 4 | April 5 | April 6

Daily Josh Lyman: March 31 | April 1 | April 2 | April 3 | April 4 | April 5 | April 6

No Context BWhit: March 31 | April 1 | April 2 | April 3 | April 4 | April 5 | April 6 

@twwarchive: April 1 | April 2 | April 3 | April 4 | April 6

@twwgifs: April 2

Editors’ Choice: 

Here are a few fics based on or featuring points from episodes that had airdate anniversaries this week. Be sure to share your favorites with us, too!

Four Days by TheBreakfastGenie | Rated G | Josh Lyman & Toby Ziegler (No Pairings Listed) | Complete | After the president tells Josh he has multiple sclerosis, Toby is waiting in his office. Josh and Toby talk about re-election, loyalty, and a few other things. Five Minutes and the Future by glassessay | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | “I don’t want to be angry about it anymore,” he says. “I’m tired, Donna. I just want my best friend back.” “Sam’s in California,” she says. “Did you not hear the capital letters? Capital B capital F Best Friend, Donna, I’m talking little matching charms on our bracelets—" “I’m tired too,” she blurts out. “It’s been a long primary.” It’s less than an hour before what’s likely the last speech of the Santos campaign, and Josh has an apology he needs to make. all I need’s a whisper in a world that only shouts by Luppiters | Rated M | Danny Concannon/C.J. Cregg | In Progress | Drabbles and ficlets inspired by requests, prompts, and just about anything, written over the years. Mostly C.J./Danny, together and apart. The Jackal, a Brief History by aronos_zitro | Rated G | Andrea Wyatt/Toby Ziegler | Complete | Have you ever wondered how The Jackal became a "thing" for CJ and the staff? Here's a brief history of how we came to have this timeless scene from "Six Meetings Before Lunch" (S01E18). Oneshot.

Fics:

Presenting your weekly roundup of fics posted in the tag for The West Wing on Archive of Our Own. 

Josh/Donna

this is the wonder (that's keeping the stars apart) by joshatella (shuuuliet) | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | In Progress

The Theory of Entropy by Jane_3yr3 | Rated M | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete

A Year In the Life by Proportional Response | Not Rated | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | In Progress

CJ/Toby

In Plain Sight by JediAnnieScrambler | Rated M | C. J. Cregg/Toby Ziegler | Complete

Other Pairings/Gen Fic

Sam Seaborn is Interviewed by Hackney123 | Rated G | No Pairings Listed | Complete

Regarding Jamie: Sound and Fury by mlea7675 | Rated G | Helen Santos/Matt Santos | In Progress

Allergies by shecouldnotcomeupwithaname | Rated G | C. J. Cregg/Kate Harper | Complete

i could be your (crush crush crush) by taliamytaliae | Rated T | Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn | Complete

EAD2021: Fight for All by hellbells (NCIS crossover) | Rated T | Anthony DiNozzo/Sam Seaborn | In Progress

We had a deal by Labda | Not Rated | Abbey Bartlet/Jed Bartlet | In Progress

Helen Visits Wisconsin by Hackney123 | Not Rated | Donna Moss/Helen Santos | Complete

THE WEEKLY PRESS BRIEFING TEAM CAN BE REACHED VIA THE FOLLOWING METHODS:

Twitter: @twwpress Email: weeklypressbriefing@gmail.com

Feel free to let us know if we missed something, if you have an event you’d like us to promote, or if you have an item that you’d like included in the next briefing!

xx, What’s next?

[ihni]

First Lines of 10 Fics Game

Rules: share the first lines of 10 of your most recent fanfics and then tag 10 people. If you have written less than 10 fics, don’t be shy and share anyways :)

I was tagged by @writerwhowritesao3, @strangerqueerthings, @harringroveera and @dragonflylady77 (thank you guys! Sorry I'm so slow)

(And I'm going with "the first lines", plural, like @writerwhowritesao3 did, because it's more fun. For me.)

1. Taking Notes (Harringrove bodyswap, WIP - but finished, just gotta read through the chapters before posting)

When it happened, it happened out of the blue. One second, Steve was carrying a plate of lukewarm leftovers from the kitchen and into the living room – where he had planned to spend the rest of his Friday night lounging in front of the TV – and the next, he was lying on his back on a lumpy bed and staring up at the cracks in the ceiling. There might have been a brief flash of white, but if there was, it was gone instantaneously.

He blinked.

Cracks in the ceiling. Actually, cracks in an unfamiliar ceiling.

2. Tumblr ficlets (Harringrove so far, short one-shots)

The hospital room is surprisingly cozy, for a hospital room. The walls aren’t white, but a light green. There’s a small plant in a pot on the windowsill, and a pile of newspapers on the table by the wall. One of them is open on the crossword page. It’s only half done, a pencil lying on the page, forgotten, as if whoever tried to solve it gave up halfway through.

There’s a chequered blanket on the bed, and an unmoving man lying under it. He’s been there for a long time. The nurses haven’t mentioned the blanket, or the newspapers, or the plant. They know not to fight a dying man’s family on the little things that might bring them comfort.

And the man in the bed is dying.

Neil Hargrove is dying.

3. Patience (Billy-centric, Flo POV, oneshot)

Flo ran out of patience twenty years ago.

For eighteen of those years, she’s been working for Hawkins’ Police Department. People have come and gone during her time here, but she has remained, through thick and thin.

Besides Flo, Jim is the one who has been here the longest, with his five years. Calvin came in a year later, and Phil only started two years ago when his family moved to Hawkins from Montana.

This means that Flo has been here longer than the three of them combined, which gives her seniority. Sure, on paper they all outrank her, but in reality, she is the one who keeps things running around here and they wouldn’t dare cross her. They all know that Flo has no patience for bullshit.

4. Here we are (Mungrove, last part of a loose series)

Eddie never thought he’d end up here; in California of all places. While many of his classmates had often talked about going to live at the sunny coast, he’d never dreamed of going. Had never felt the need to see the ocean or frolic in the sun. Back when he used to plan his campaigns for game night, he always had his head in the clouds, but when it came to real life, he hadn’t ever dreamt that big. Sure, he’d entertained the thought of someday making it; becoming one of the great musicians of his time and get to travel the world … and yes, maybe California had been a part of that, vaguely. But he’d never actually thought he’d make it out of Indiana.

5. Where do we go from here (Mungrove, same series as above)

After coming back from Darktown, Billy can’t sleep. It’s a problem.

It’s not surprising, that he can’t sleep. He’s being kept in a lab he doesn’t know the whereabouts of, having samples taken with or without his consent, and having to submit to various testing on the daily. All of those are perfectly good reasons for a person not to be able to sleep. But Billy has slept a wall away from monsters, both the literal and the figurative kind. He’s slept next to certain death. The lab is not the reason why he can’t sleep.

No, the reason why he can’t sleep – and the reason why it’s a problem – is Eddie.

6. A piece of meaning on your skin (Harringrove, oneshot)

“This is stupid,” Steve said, because it was. It was monumentally stupid. “We shouldn’t be here. None of us really won the bet anyway so we shouldn’t have to do this!”

“Correction,” Billy said, not looking up from the folder he was leafing through. “Both of us were right, which means that both of us won the bet, which means that we’re both going to get our prize.” He held up a picture of a stylized snake that was wrapped around a sword. “What do you think of this one?”

Steve groaned. “I hate it. Billy, please. My mom will kill me.”

7. Love in the ER (Harringrove first meeting, oneshot)

It was a busy night in the Hawkins’ Memorial emergency room, which meant that the waiting room was almost full. Almost half of the people there had been guests at the Wellingtons’ wedding where they had been served bad shrimp (two of them had thought to bring their own puke buckets, and the rest took turns running to and from the only bathroom). Then there was an old couple, a drunk man with a nail through his hand (and the wife who kept berating him under her breath) a mother with a sleeping toddler and a sweaty eight-year-old, and four teenagers.

Robin, who was – unfortunately – one of these teenagers, could think of about eighty-four things she would rather be doing than accompanying her friend to the ER after having a reaction to his new allergy medicine.

“’obin?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to tell herself it wasn’t his fault. “Yes, dingus?”

“I wow yo.”

“I know."

8. Mr. Peterson next door (Harringrove, one-shot)

Billy was already waiting by the mailbox when the postman came. It was the third day in a row he was standing there, and today the mailman just raised his eyebrows as he handed Billy a small stack of envelopes. Billy didn’t do more than grunt in thanks before he started rifling through the letters. There were bills addressed to his dad, one letter that looked like an offer to start a magazine subscription for Susan – and nothing for Billy. As usual.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath and went inside to prepare for work. He was alone in the house – Neil and Susan had left for work already and since it was summer, Max was already out, hanging with her friends. Billy worked the late shift at the pool this week, which was why he had time to wait by the mailbox. And after that, by the phone.

At five to eleven, the phone rang, just like he knew it would.

9. Over the edge (Harringrove, oneshot, one of my own personal faves, I had so much fun with this! :D)

“This is going to be so awesome!”

Billy rolled his eyes from behind his aviators and glanced over into the backseat, where Lucas, Max and Dustin were seated, and where Dustin was visibly about to vibrate through his seatbelt in excitement.

“Chill, kid,” Billy said and put his boot up on the dash. “We’re literally going to spend a weekend in some cabins in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get what the fuck is going to be so awesome about that.”

“Feet off the dash,” Steve said, without taking his eyes off the dirt road they were on. Billy left his foot where it was for a couple of seconds, until Steve slapped at his knee and the car swerved a little. Billy reluctantly put his foot down.

The kids tittered excitedly in the back seat.

“What?” Billy growled.

“You don’t have to be such a grump!” Max said, rolling her eyes. “We’re here to have fun! Everyone else is looking forward to this!”

“Well, everyone else fucking chose to be here."

10. Sharing clothes (Harringrove, oneshot)

Neil Hargrove up and left his wife and his wife’s daughter four months after his son died in the mall fire. Three months before that, though, he emptied out his son’s room and got rid of his belongings.

Steve only found out about it because Max was upset and told the Party about it. She said that she had pilfered some things away but that Neil was hell-bent on clearing out Billy’s room and wouldn’t listen to her pleas. So they all rallied, and about an hour after Neil had put all of Billy’s things in boxes and donated them to Goodwill, they were there, sweet-talking the staff into letting them go through the new arrivals. Max got some of it back simply by looking tearful and explaining the situation to the lady behind the counter, and the rest of them chipped in (Steve, most of all) to pay for and salvage the rest.

They brought the boxes to Steve’s house – Max couldn’t very well bring back Billy’s things to the house on Cherry Lane, and Steve had the space to store them.

He put them along the wall in the guest bedroom that no one ever slept in, and tried to forget about them.

~~~

Now, when that's over and done with, I'm tagging ... (and listen, I don't care if you've done this before; if you have, then pick the NEXT ten on your list, or do a random quote from your fics instead of the first couple of lines, I don't care!): @lazybakerart @mikajupiterjonesingtimcurryfeet @platypanthewriter @callieb @billyharringson (I know for SURE you've done this before, but eh, you have lots of fics to choose from!), @bentnotbroken1fanfiction @peaceheather @missroserose @mourntheantagonist and @keziahrainalso - and also if you got this far and I didn't tag you, consider yourself tagged! I've officially tagged you. I wanna see what you've done. Show me.

[kaesaaurelia]

Made little Hero Forge guys out of every single character I've ever played at least one session of in a TTRPG. (The ones with closeups I've played for more than one session.) Details under the cut.

Top Row:

Literally Just Terezi Pyrope, Pathfinder; half-orc Investigator Made for a Pathfinder oneshot wherein my friend was playing a Vriska-inspired character. I feel the need to disclaim that we did not kill or maim anyone out-of-game. I don't even remember if we killed anyone in-game because I remember it being pretty puzzle/trap-focused?

????; Ryuutama; Crafter/Autumn Sorceress I'm kicking myself that I don't remember her name. She was a seamstress, and in the specific world we were playing in we were the descendants of space colonists, so I decided her ancestors would be from a culture with really pretty fabric patterns.

Ylva Truehand, D&D 5E; half-orc monk. A herbo if ever there was one. Accidentally became the figurehead of a coup d'etat at home and had to Leave Right Now Immediately. We only got to the part where we all met at an inn before outside circumstances meant the campaign fell apart.

2nd Row:

Katja, 3.5E D&D; human cleric prestige class (maybe a Radiant Servant of Pelor?) My very first TTRPG character! I played her in a high school friend's historical-fantasy-inspired homebrew setting campaign he ran one summer in college. She was meant to be an army doctor for Fantasy Imperial Russia and we were doing an escort mission across a desert that was, iirc, disputed territory between three superpowers? Mostly I remember killing a lot of ninjas and then stumbling across a magical oasis where the water was magically pacifying, finding the mineral that was responsible for this effect, grinding a bunch of it into powder, and then making our GM's life a living hell by slipping it into NPCs' drinks whenever we wanted something from them.

3rd Row:

Safira, Stewpot; Paladin/Artisan. This one's pretty obviously an expy of my angel OC Vehuel. Stewpot is a game about retiring from adventuring so the character concept for her was "Holy warrior chosen by prophecy to kill a great evil with a magic sword; accidentally fell in love with the great evil. Eventually killed it anyway. Deeply traumatized."

Yarrow Tunneler, Mausritter; Acorn sign wireworker. Yarrow came out so cute here! A lot of stuff in Mausritter is randomly assigned and I think her class was one of those things, but I liked the wireworker thing (basically she's a mouse electrician) and one of her starting bits of equipment was a spool of wire. There weren't any good wire spools on Hero Forge, but I managed to make a battery-looking thing for her to carry around on her back.

Esca Glowfin, Ocean Tides; mermaid. Yeah so the game wanted me to choose whether she was going to be a mermaid or pirate but I wanted to be both so I made it work. The actual character concept I had in my head does not look much like this but turns out one of Hero Forge's weaknesses is deep sea benthic horrors with needle teeth. So I just made her hot. Sorry, Esca, you probably deserved better.

4rd Row:

Minu Darzi, Shadowrun 5E/Definitely Not Shadowrun At All; elf face. This one's an expy of my demon OC Nisroc, but like, a very very tiny sliver of Nisroc's whole schtick. I tend to describe her as "what if Grendel's mother was a shitty grifter who wanted to be an influencer?" but she shoots a lot of people so I feel like her sphere of influence is powerful but limited to like. Influencing people to die.

5th Row:

Royse, 5E D&D; Aasimar rogue. Another Vehuel expy, this one much younger and less traumatized. Royse was made for a West Marches group I didn't really vibe with. The one session I played was great but the out-of-game downtime stuff felt like a part-time accounting job and I don't have any interest in accounting. Anyway Royse was fun and she was gonna be a Swashbuckler.

Pandora (& Scylax), Worlds Without Number; mage (Necromancer/Beastmaster). For the oneshot group I'm part of we've started doing a test combat session at the end of Session Zero to make sure our characters aren't going to die immediately, and after that our GM decided we should be using the Heroic rules. In the combat trial, Pandora used her one (1) spell slot to mind-control one of the wolves that were attacking us and it killed a bunch of the rest of them, so given the opportunity to add another 1/2 mage specialization I picked Beastmaster and gave her a wolf. I really liked some of the lore for this game but oof, it's super unforgiving. (I think it might be a good starting point if you wanted to play a Locked Tomb campaign, though?)

Zamira the Magnificent, Blades in the Dark; slide. This character was a disgraced stage magician who accidentally killed her assistant (maybe sawed them in half?) and I liked the concept but our Blades in the Dark party really didn't end up doing much RP, even though we are a very RP-heavy group; I kind of wish the game had facilitated it more.

6th Row:

????; Tempus Diducit; Weird Scientist. Tempus Diducit is a no-prep chaotic game about a time travel crisis where a lot of things are randomized; mostly I remember there being superintelligent octopi and making strong acids, and also me having a lot of very annoying ideas involving my specialized knowledge of both cephalopods and chemistry.

????; Subway Runners. I remember very little about my Subway Runners character but basically this is a no-prep game where your character sheet is entirely randomized and every character is probably at least a little Done With This Shit because every Subway Runners PC is a gig economy worker whose shitty gig job is fixing an urban fantasy public transit system full of extremely weird shit. I think by the end of the session all our characters had cat ears.

Miriam; You Awaken in a Strange Place; marine biologist. Once more my specialized cephalopod knowledge comes back to bite me in the ass! (Also, this is the second Miriam on the list; 'Zamira the Magnificent' was a stage name.) YAiaSP is another no-prep chaotic game; you also get to make up all the skills your characters have, and Miriam was good at Identifying Marine Animals but bad at Working Under Pressure, which was great because they were in a locked submarine murder mystery and identifying marine animals was basically of no use whatsoever. I think in the end she failed a Using Scientific Equipment roll and then bluffed that she had actually gotten the DNA results to get the murderer to confess. This is unethical if you're in law enforcement; if you're a professional marine animal identifier it's still unethical but I think it's also kind of impressive. Only I forget if it actually worked, so maybe it wasn't.

7th Row:

Heshky, Pathfinder 2E; half-orc investigator. I have literally only ever played half-orc investigators in Pathfinder, which is very funny to me. [Edit: This is no longer true! I have a dwarf ranger now.] Heshky here is not much like the Terezi expy, though. He is an expy, but of one of my OCs rather than someone else's and his backstory is that he's a former mob accountant whose boss died in circumstances that were technically not his fault, so he had to leave town for a while. I would absolutely love to play him somewhere else; he was made for my one-shot group but we ended up stretching that Pathfinder one-shot out to like 5? 6? sessions and I got very attached. (If I played him again I miiight not start him out as an investigator though, because he almost died like 3 times.)

8th Row:

Zirane, I'm Sorry, Did You Say Street Magic, baker. ISDYSSM is a cooperative worldbuilding game so I kind of forgot there was a character I played in it, but apparently I did! This guy lives in a fantasy city and works at a cafe owned by some mystery person (possibly a vampire?) but he's not worried about that. He is good at baking, but likes experimenting with weird combinations of flavors, which sometimes means his extremely well-made baked goods taste regrettable.

Kjersti, Session Zero; war-witch deserter. Session Zero is a character creation/development game without character classes; it can actually be played solo as a writing exercise too! So I just kind of went wild here. I really like the concept I ended up with and keep meaning to post what I wrote up for her; over the course of the game she went from annoyed arcane college student to spoiled rich girl to army deserter trying to survive a magical war crimes-induced apocalypse and daydreaming about overthrowing her own government in no time at all.

Edie, Genesys; dwarf mad alchemist. The setting we decided on for the Genesys one-shot was cyberpunk fantasy, a bit like Shadowrun but if magic had always been in the world, so I decided to pull out one of my old, old LJRP characters (Ed Espis) and repurpose her. Edie grew up a third- or fourth-generation corporate citizen and very privileged, but when her parents died under mysterious circumstances and she was fired shortly thereafter, the company decided she had to pay off all the resources they had invested in her entire family so now she's broke and has to do crimes (petty) instead of crimes (war) to live. She ended this session by shooting a guy in the head but listen, he extremely deserved it.

[iamthepulta]

Hey which media/story/franchise is your liztlie AU based on? I've been trying to figure it out based on context clues and I'm getting no where. Please insert long ass info dump rant below.

OH HELL YEAH. <3

The Liztlie AU is based on the Fallen London universe by Failbetter Game studio! Fallen London is a decade-old browser game that’s updated regularly. It’s excellent. There’s also a PC game called Sunless Seas, which was my introduction to the fandom and still some of my favorite content. After the success of Sunless Seas, they made another PC game called Sunless Skies, which I love lore-wise, but for some reason can’t get into playing. (And now they have Mask of the Rose! Which just came out on the 8th! Also set in Fallen London, but a prequel to all of the games.)

For some background, Fallen London and Sunless Seas are set in the same location and same timeline. London as a city, has been pulled down into the cave called the Neath. (Mask of the Rose is set just after the Fall happens.) There are several different London factions, but most importantly, on one end of the Neath, there is a Gate. Sunless Skies is, strictly speaking, a possible AU timeline, set after London discovers and opens that Gate to a realm called the Reach.  

Sunless Skies is its own beast; all the lore in Sunless Seas and Fallen London is dialed up to 11. The focus is on either allying or destroying the 'Great Chain of Being', which includes everything from the industrialist time-manipulating nightmare London has become, to talking rats, to the “Gods”, the Suns of each realm which feed off of the souls of their inhabitants. The game developers did a great job at expanding the world of Fallen London in Sunless Skies, and there are several maps you can play through, a few dozen storylines, and a lot of cool content. (10/10, recommend. Although as fellow rock-eater, you might prefer Sunless Seas. It’s always a tossup.)

So because PC gameplay isn’t enough, people enthusiastically made an RPG out of Sunless Skies! Enter Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor. The Skyfarer RPG system is one page long. I’m biased because I hate long, complicated, number-based RPG systems, but I think this RPG is awesome. It was meant for short campaigns, it’s a d10 system, and your character is designed around being one of the officers on a Skies locomotive. Easy, inventive, and flexible.

Enter two ADHD geologists and a pandemic:

@paleomancer hit up our friend group one day and asked if we wanted to play a oneshot RPG in Skyfarer. We were socially distancing and mentally traumatized nerds, so of course the answer was Yes. And the oneshot was great! We made our characters, played the game for a few hours, finished the oneshot plot, and successfully carried our passenger to Elutheria along with her illicit books. We liked it so much we agreed to keep playing every few weeks just to keep in touch during the pandemic.

This was all well and good until I lost my mind playing Westlie. My dipshit friends (affectionate) thought it was a great idea for me, the First Mate, to be promoted when our captain kicked the bucket. I hadn’t written fiction since college, but I started writing again as I fleshed out her backstory and the DM and I crafted her sister, Morgan. Then I just kind of kept… creating stories and toying with different ways for Westlie to develop until @justanormalseagull and I were playing around with the Found Family/Adoption trope. She'd played Lizzie’s character, and in a burst of inspiration, I realized the plot of our first few Skyfarer seasons would still work well if Westlie adopted Lizzie and never left London. So I casually wrote five chapters as a gift, fell down the rabbit hole again, and now the Liztlie AU is a 200k monster. xD

So to really answer your question, the Liztlie AU is an AU of our Skyfarer Game, which is a translation of Sunless Skies, which is an AU of Sunless Seas, which is an offshoot of the ancient, niche, Fallen London browser game. xD The context clues are piecemeal at best, haha.

But the nice thing! At this point, the Liztlie AU is its own standalone story; it starts at the 'beginning' of the Skyfarer campaign, so you don't need to know anything about the Pyrrhus. And it's set in Sunless Skies, but I explain 90% of the world as Westlie learns about it anyway. Both aspects are basically Easter eggs for readers to enjoy if they happen to know. Which makes the absurdity of what I'm writing even greater because the AU is kind of my own novel now? But also, most definitely not.

The best links if you want to browse are: My Archive -> “the crew of the Pyrrhus” (for memes of the main campaign), "fl", “dnd”, "liztlie au", “wm”, “mw”, or just “westlie”

THANKS FOR ASKING! THIS MADE MY EVENING. :D NOW YOU KNOW! :D

Brief character summaries (links lead to more):

Westlie Faire is/was my Skyfarer PC. She has a horrible father, Arthur Faire, and ran away from the title of Heir to Fairweather Shipping Co. to be the First Mate on the Pyrrhus.

Morgan Faire is her younger sister. Extremely lucky due to [redacted] reasons.

Lizzie Twaddle is/was @justanormalseagull ‘s PC. She was an orphan who snuck aboard the Pyrrhus and got adopted as mascot by the crew. In the AU, she’s adopted by Westlie while she’s trying to sneak onboard a train and Westlie takes her back to London. Just wants a family. T__T

[usagi-zakura]

Drawing a bunch of my DnD oneshot characters.

They all exist in the same universe, and sometimes pop up in the main campaign (the one with Remus the foxfolk wizbard, and now Moriko the ranger) but whenever someone can't make it to a session we like to do a oneshot in the same world. Its a lot of fun and is great for worldbuilding... and its also fun when we run into these characters later.

There are more... The kobolds Hugs and Kisses also exist in this world, but I've already drawn those a lot.

The characters are:

Nyx Duskrynn: Drow Druid (Circle of the Stars) She's one of three drow siblings with a dark past (though her's is the less dark.. my friend made a set of twins and gave them a really tragic backstory of being kidnapped and used for experimentation... and since I made a drow for the same oneshot we decided to make her the younger sister who got away.) She has since been reunited with her siblings and went on to explore a spooky house that turns out to have held a coven of hags... her oneshot ended up inconclusive but the DM later revealed that Nyx, her siblings and their guardian got captured by the hags... So that may be something our main party will have to deal with at some point (probably in another oneshot because their adventure is technically over). We've been told one of the twins has been freed, but we don't know exactly what that entails yet, nor what happened to Nyx and her sister.

Shadow in the Wind: Tabaxi Monk (Way of Shadow because of course he is) A small time criminal and best friend/boyfriend to Remus' older brother Romulus (its complicated). I've played him in two oneshots so far, one he was exploring another spooky house (there's a lot of those...) and another he was searching for a creature that could grant wishes living in a cave.

Alexis: Centaur ranger (Beastmaster conclave Tasha edition) Nicknamed the "All Terrain centaur" because thanks to class abilities and a magical item (winged boots re-flavored as magic horseshoes) she has every type of movement available in DnD, except burrowing. (I did consider giving her an item that would give her that too just for the hell of it) She's also really fast... being a centuar. So she can fly/run/swim/climb at 45 feet per turn. (Well maybe not climb since Centaurs have their own handicap when it comes to climbing...she could technically just walk right up the mountain wall though thanks to her magic horseshoes). Despite being a ranger she's part of a druid organization that's a pretty big deal in our world. She also gets visions of the future sometimes. She has no special feats for it or anything...she just does.

Her animal companion is named Hermes. He's a bird. He's not designed to be any specific type of bird or anything he's just bird. (He uses the "Beast of the Sky" statblock from the updated BM Ranger in Tasha's Cauldron of everything).

Sapphire Twinkletoes: Fairy Barbarian (Path of Wild Magic) Yeah that's right. Barbarian. (For some reason all my Barbarians are small races...I didn't even try for that it just happened.) I had an idea to make an anxious fairy but wasn't sure what class to make her...the DM suggested Barbarian with the rage reflavored as Panic. I went for wild magic because she's a magical creature but not a magic class...so her magic just goes haywire when she's afraid. She's a lot of fun. Yes her last name was inspired by Avatar the Last Airbender.

Jasmine Greenjoy: Gnome Wizard Played in Pathfinder 2e instead of DnD. Second cousin once removed on her mother's side to the main party's rogue Jade, as the second time I made my character related to one a character made by that player specifically (Jade's player is the same person who made the traumatized drow twins who became Nyx's older siblings). Mainly because they're the same race and I thought it'd be neat to tie them to the main party, even though in the campaign they haven't interacted. They have met...in fact the DM implied that Jasmine's mother was a midwife for Jade's mother when Jade was born, as a reason to explain why Jasmine is a magical misfit. Jade's mother did some suspect magical things on her unborn daughter... I don't know what they did, but as a result Jade was born with bright pink hair and Jasmine... well her hair changes color every day. She likes to have it match her familiar, a fluffy pipefox named Mr. Noodles.

[crystal-lillies]

Some positive things, widespread and personal, from 2023

Hello all here's my annual good things roundup, and as always I'll be missing a good lot of stuff that happened bc I'm pulling from the top of my head and also I'm running late.

In no particular order:

Some great indie animation stuff this year, with Hazbin Hotel news and episodes of Helluva Boss continuing and then the Lackadaisy pilot and fundraising campaign success!

Got the end of The Owl House early in 2023, and while it was not the ending we all would have hoped for, it was an incredible ending all the same and absolutely so well made.

Avatar: The Last Airbender has a new official TTRPG game, several of the OG cast did a playthrough of it, AND the trailer for the live action TV series doesn't look half bad! Also, Toph's VA has been reacting to the series. Overall it's been a great year for ATLA fans.

CLAMP announced that the continuation of the CCS Clear Card anime is on its way, and the Clear Card manga finished this year! The kids are okay!

Game movie wins! Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, along with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, were both great adaptations and fun movies where previously adapted movies of the same properties were so awful they make Artemis Fowl look barely passable!

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse was super freaking incredible cinema and stupendous animation and score. And the animators got a break from having to cram the Beyond the Spiderverse movie in a year jfc.

The WGA and SAGAFTRA strikes I wouldn't consider positives on their own; however, the overwhelming solidarity across the lines and from us the fans and everyone in the same working boat helped the WGA and SAGAFTRA strikers stick it to the studio execs being literal cartoonish villains and get the things they were asking for after a brutally long strike period where the studio execs absolutely wanted them all to lose their homes and suffer. Power to the workers! WGA and SAGAFTRA strong!

BARBIE. No notes. 100000/10. You go girl.

But also the meme of Barbenheimer, absolutely genius.

GOOD OMENS SEASON 2!!!! HOOO BOY Neil Gaiman really shook us to the core with these ineffable celestial lads

The Marvels was a lot of fun! Kamala Khan and adult Monica Rambeau finally got to the big screen and they were so good altogether with Carol Danvers! Sadly didn't get great box office, but the movie itself being good makes up for that in my eyes!

Wonka was also a lot better than expected! Very fun and wholesome and heartwarming! Not bad Timothee Chalamet, not bad.

Critical Role's The Legend of Vox Machina season 2 was incredible, and a Mighty Nein animated series was also announced to be in the works! Plus, we got a Mighty Nein live show in London! And Candela Obscura premiered this year as well! And the Exquisite Exandria cookbook dropped in August and it's been so amazing.

Dimension 20 has been popping off this year as well, and several of its cast started Worlds Beyond Number, which is on a whole other level of inspirational and awesome.

On some personal notes, I got to spend time with good friends this past year (and getting one into TLOVM and Critical Role too, which has been fun)

And in that vein, I got into a bonafide Dungeons and Dragons campaign this summer, based from a oneshot I played in April by putting myself out there and trying something new. And man, this campaign has been one of the best things in 2023 let alone maybe my whole life. I'm so grateful to be a part of it and to keep going.

And this past summer, I got to go to a convention and meet several of my favorite actors including the cast of Smallville, Charlie Cox, Dante Basco, and Jason Liebrecht! It was so much fun.

I spent my birthday with my whole immediate family and went to Disney Hollywood Studios and had such a blast!

And I started more actively sending my writing out to litmags! While nothing has been accepted yet, I am ever more determined to be published!

There is much more good that happened in 2023 but for now, this is a good sample to end the year and beckon the new one forth with the same and even more positive vibes.

[hoardingpuffin]

I am bored so I am gonna rank my DND and other RPG characters I've played thus far from 1 to 10.

Maria the Mafia Bride - 2/10

First ever RPG character I played, and I didn't create her, because that game we all got a randomized character from our GM. Liked the campaign (we were all time travellers from different eras - one other character was a knight from the crusades named Melvin who, through a series of happenstances, ended up wearing one bright red stiletto heel, and another other character was a Dutch ballerina who one-hitted Billy the Kid with her dance skill. Iconic shit), but the character wasn't really my thing.

Jacen, the Troubled Kid - 2/10

This was the second campaign I played and it was sort-of-but-not-really superpowers themed? We all had powers but the universe was kinda weird and nobody really got to do much, especially with our powers? So I kind of never got to explore him in RP and I still am slightly salty about it.

The Nerd - 3/10

I do not remember her name anymore but this was for a Halloween oneshot where we all played American High School archetypes (except for one of our players who chose to be the janitor? Who for some reason hung out with all the teens?). I remember nothing about this oneshot except that everyone was dead at the end and that my character lugged around a huge encyklopedia that she ended up throwing at someone, which I think is neat.

Plush Octopus - 5/10

This was for a super chaotic Toy Story themed oneshot that somehow ended up in bloodshed? I still am not sure how exactly that happened but there was a stint where a toy dragon was being chased into a goldfish tank by the family cat.

Aevetia - 8/10

We played a WoW themed campaign, which was certainly challenging seeing that most of us knew zilch about World of Warcraft. Aevetia was a draenai huntress who was literally incapable of negative emotions, and she was so much fun to play. I think this was the first time I played a character that was somewhat able to hold herself in a battle and I definitely loved that. Plus, first time I felt like we actually had a more roleplay and improv based campaign which is what I prefer over just-combat. She did also get whacked in the face with the Doomhammer twice thanks to another player failing their rolls. Docking points because when playing a character who cannot feel anger that limits a lot of what you can do, plus it was hard to navigate a setting I knew zilch about.

Eiorna the Giant Magpie - 9/10

MY GIRL! I love her so much, I wanna play her again so bad. She's a 7 foot tall avian woman whose wings got burnt off, leaving her with only sceleton remains so she's creepy as hell visually, but her personality is about as intimidating as candy floss. Also she had a bag of shiny stuff she lugged around called The Trashbag and she would occasionally just reach in there and pull out shinies to tie them to her wingbones - oblivious to the fact that that was highkey horrifying to anyone around her. Docking one point because when I played her she was really really ditzy and I think I'd probably revise her a it before playing her again.

Gwyn the Rabbitfolk Barbarian - 8/10

I only played her for one session before the campaign was abandoned but she was so fun! The whole concept of a two foot white fluffy bunny with a slingshot raging in a tavern was fantastic, I wish I could have played her more. Docking points for my choice of making her Scottish (I cannot do a Scottish accent to save my arse and I think she just kept drifting off into Russian somehow).

Bex the Stablemaster - 10/10

My first ever tank, and the first time I ever played a queer character around my friends. This was for a Victorian era vibe Halloween oneshot and Bex was a strong she/they lesbian. Need I say more?

Tancred the Weather Witch - 9/10

This was for like, a sort of Eldritch entity cultist themed oneshot? My character was maybe the only one who actually dealt damage and he was soooo fun. Now, did I essentially steal him from the Charlie Bone series? Yes. But for a oneshot it was fine, plus storm powers >

Zami - 10/10

If Tramp from Lady and the Tramp was a red tiefling who adopted about fifty kids. No notes, love him, he is perfect.

Veera Match - 9/10

My current Star Wars campaign character, a mother who is an ex-empirial soldier who is hunting down the man who killed her wife and stole her force sensitive child. Absolutely adore her but the campaign is just kinda not it. Might very well recycle her at some point though.

Nikolai Ortsev the Vampirist - 7/10

Made him for what was supposed to be a Halloween oneshot set in our GMs homebrew world. Nikolai's a self-obsessed anthropologist who believes he is the one who can singlehandedly unite the vampire and human societies... by becoming a vampire. Listen, he's my vain, slightly stupid gay scientist man and I love him - however I think he would have been better suited for a long-term campaign than a oneshot. We're not through with that story so we'll see where it goes with him.

The Toy Soldier - 10/10

Exactly what it sounds like: I played the Toy Soldier of The Mechanisms for another Halloween oneshot and IT WAS A BLAST. Easily the silliest and yet most damage-dealing character I have played to date. So so much fun. I love it, it's brilliant.

Vikesh Joiko - 10/10

He is my baby - purple tiefling cleric of a light deity, certified pretty boy, looks gorgeous in a ballgown, can and will flirt with any handsome man who seems willing, and his weapon of choice are dual axes. Also he is not above tearing out another tiefling's fangs and wearing them as jewellery when that other person is acting like a major creep. Love him, love him so much.

[thatfeanorian]

20 Questions for fic writers!

Thanks for the tag @spiritofwhitefire!!! I love these <3

1. How many works do you have in A03? I just hit the 50 mark with my most recent oneshot!

2. What is your total word count? 285,059 and that's just the stuff I've published on ao3 I'd estimate it's closer to 350-400,000

3. What fandoms do you write for? It's all the silmarillion. that's all that exists. save me.

4. My top 5 fics by Kudos: ahh yes it's plug time:

Make You Mine (the way you should be) is an older Kidnap Fam fic featuring E & E having prophetic dreams about M & M (very fluffy)!!

All The Ways To Love is a completed russingon longfic of mine featuring an arranged marriage AU with Bad Dad Fëanor. Normally I love Fëanor but he just worked so wonderfully as a villian here lol.

The Difference Between You and I is a kidnap fam fic centering around the first night E & E spend with M & M. I love this fic so much and I'm so glad it's in my top 5!

And We Begin Again is my current WIP longfic with modern AU russingon. I am super proud of this fic and it is being updated slowly but consistantly due to the fact that I am a disaster nursing student.

Guide You Softly Slowly Towards The Light is another kidnap fam fic (very super fluffy with only a hint of angst) featuring Mae's love language being cooking/baking and lullabies.

Please check these out and leave me comments if you can I will love you forever!

5. Do you respond to comments? Every single one. They keep me writing and I am in debt to anyone who has ever said a nice thing about my fics. I also often take requests in the comments for what people want to see in the future chapters of long fics because ultimately I am writing a story to share!

6. Fic with the angstiest ending? OOOOH... honestly it's easily When Stars Sing, one of my favorite things I've ever written which has (imo) sinfully few reads. It made me cry while writing it and the TRSB art I wrote it for is stunningly beautiful. It's a Russingon fic (again oops) exploring Maedhros and Fingon's relationship in Beleriand.

7. Fic with the happiest ending? Perfect For Me. I am on my body diversity elves campaign and this is one of the fluffiest things I've ever written. I will def write more stuff like this whether or not there is an audience for it because it makes *me* happy.

8. Do I get hate on fics? I have indeed and it was on the ones where I have written chubby elves. Honestly, I just feel bad for the people who feel like they need to hate on bigger bodies and tell me that "you're slandering Tolkien's idea of what elves are." I simply delete and move on, so don't bother leaving them because they will not stop me from publishing what I want.

9. Do I write smut? If so what kind? I do indeed write smut. Most of it is plot relevant but I do have a few pwp oneshots. So kind of everything.

10. Do I write crossovers? Nope.

11. Have I had a fic translated? I have not but I would be beyond honored if anyone ever wanted to.

12. Have I ever co-written a fic? I did a long time ago with a friend in high school but there is nothing published that was co-written. I'd love to do it again though so if anyone wants to co-author a fic with me (ahem @last-capy-hupping, @arofili, @spiritofwhitefire I'm eyeing all of you intensely) I'd adore that.

13. All time favorite ship? Russingon. All you have to do is look at my AO3 to confirm that.

14. WIP I want to finish but don't know if I ever will? This isn't published but I have a longer Russingon fic about Valinor flirting/getting together that someday I'd like to publish but at this rate I think it might be years and probably a hundred thousand words away.

15. Writing strengths? world building and imagery because I can sit there for hours and describe a setting without adding to the plot even once.

16. Writing weaknesses: writing action scenes and arguments, I always feel like they come across choppy and unrealistic.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language? I've never done it but I would be open to trying it... the closest I've gotten is writing phrases/words in Quenya and Sindarin in my fics.

18. First fandom I wrote for? I actually have no idea it might have been Percy Jackson with my classy self-insert or possibly Lord of the Rings.

19. Favorite fic I’ve written? That's hard I'm stuck between my current WIP and When Stars Sing (both linked above) although I also really love Your Face, So Sweet, another modern AU Russingon fic about adopting baby Gil-Galad.

Did I miss a question somewhere?? I don't think so but if y'all have any other questions or requests for fics my askbox is always open even if I'm a slow writer at the moment.

Tagging: @last-capy-hupping, @arofili, @i-did-not-mean-to, @jaz-the-bard, @secretlythranduil, and anyone else who wants to, make sure you tag me because I want to see everyone's answers!!!