#they'll rebuild

[angeart]

thinking about the boatem circus au and...yeah, i totally forgot that it's implied that the watchers set fire to the circus..............i can't imagine the GUILT grian feels if/when he finds out.........maybe he thinks that he should have just sucked it up and stayed with the watchers because if he had then at least the only one being hurt would be himself, not other lost and vulnerable hybrids........

okay you have nO IDEA how much this made me think of hhau grian actually. for, uh, reasons.

anyway, i think if the boatem circus folk found out, they'd get even more protective over grian. pointing out that it's not his fault; that he's not guilty of this crime, but the people who set those flames, knowingly. that the cruelty doesn't come from grian's hands and it's not his fault that it follows in his footsteps.

grian would still feel guilty, absolutely devastated that scar's wonderful circus burned to the ground because of shadows of grian's past... but i think he couldn't stand the thought of never leaving that awful place. even if it'd prevent this from happening to the others. is it selfish? maybe.

i don't think i should've never left is a thought that he has. but it's not like he wants anyone else to get hurt either! it's complicated!

[miriani-lavellan]

I think some fans get too attached their fluffy headcanons in the space between these games. You should know by now this world is blighted and corrupted and that peace and stability is so fragile every decade or so something happens to break it. Every attempt to save Thedas is only going to half-work until the Blight is solved. All our heroes have been doing is putting off the inevitable.

What our heroes do is not save the world, but give it a chance.

[poisonousquinzel]

"a dude in Texas legally changed his name to "Literally Anyone Else" and he's attempting to run for President against Biden & Trump" [source]

okay, but putting aside the comedic aspect of this, it is concerning the amount of people who are prompted to vote for candidates just because it's funny. I'm not the biggest fan of how his policy about the boarder sounds [Site], but I do implore anyone who is able to vote in the 2024 US election to please research other candidates.

The media is only going to continue pushing the idea it's inevitably going to be Trump vs Biden 2.0 and we have no other options, that we have to vote for Biden again because of Project 2025. Is that whole thing terrifying?

Yeah, fucking absolutely.

But voting for Biden will not solidify our safety from that. Biden is exactly like the rest of them. He always has been. You can't make the lesser of two evils argument when they're both just plain evil.

You cannot say that Biden is even mildly a better choice than Trump when he is currently directly involved in a genocide. That is not some little fucking thing. That in and of itself disqualifies him as a lesser evil. Biden is just as bad as him and he will not save us because he doesn't fucking care.

Cornel West [Site] is an Independent candidate running for President in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia [Site] are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

There are options.

There are people trying to change the corrupt foundation our system is built on, but we have to help amplify them because the mainstream media will not.

[diloph]

Coming to you live, the immediate and dreaded realization that a big red mechanical eye in one franchise is actually the big red mechanical eye from the other one.

HERE WE GO AGAIN, FOLKS!

[brown-little-robin]

pro tip: do NOT try to paint "just a little" stain onto your ceramics at 11:50 at night. do NOT balance the box of stain (green) (carcinogenic) on the corner of another box to do so. DO NOT SPILL YOUR POWDERED CARCINOGENS at MIDNIGHT. it will take you half an hour to clean it up and you will feel paranoid the entire time. you will also lose several books that you couldn't clean up completely. and a towel. and some really good pajama pants you're sorry to see go.

I... should be fine?

[yellowlaboratory]

Where do you see jj and kie after el dolrado? Like they have the gold but kie can’t go back home so do they slum it at the maybank house together ? Is they where you think there first time is ? Do you think jj scared of the commitment as well cos he loves her so much and doesn’t want to see her hurt

i honestly have no clue where they might be staying after el dorado! they're both still minors, so kiara can't exaclty just tell her parents to fuck off, and JJ's going to probably have to figre out emancipation or something like that at some point cause he can't just rent a place as a 17 year old, no matter how much money he has (unless the pates are just gonna ignore that too and you know what? I appreciate how much they avoid in order to not become a legal procedural cause these kids are breaking federal laws every five minutes). I don't know if we'll see Kiara at her house, but I can't imagine her parents just give up after Kitty Hawk - maybe finding out she was telling the truth the whole time about ward and the gold will force them to have a come-to-jesus moment and we'll see mike eat his fucking words?

i have written way more words about kiara and jj ending up at the maybank house than I ever thought I would, and I would love to see it, but I think JJ's goodbye to that house before they leave for South America is pretty final, so I don't think we'll be seeing too much of it in s4.

I have options running around my head. Tannyhill is a possibility, depending on where Rafe is. The condo Ward gave Sarah is another option. I can't imagine Heyward would turn all of them down, but there's not a whole lot of room for all the pogues in their house. idk!! i think it depends on how realistic the writers want to be with it.

also YES i think we'll get to see JJ's commitment issues come up and see him work through that, and I'm kind of excited to see him a little bit struggle with the romance of it all, you know?? I think it's going to be a very interesting dynamic and i'm excited to see it play out!!!!

[buckys-arm-and-rios-dagger]

Y'ever think about how in Winter Soldier Pierce mentioned he has a daughter who was a political officer when he tells Steve about Bogota? Sure would be wild if that became important

[sandwrrm]

In other news the fucking darksaber is finally gone, good riddance!!!!

[lizzybeeee]

Well, well, what have we here?

🎤 We want your questions! 🎤

Join us for a Reddit AMA with some of our Dragon Age: The Veilguard developers on 12/4! More info: http://x.ea.com/datv/RedditAMAInfo

[edwardos]

From my majorly incomplete abandoned CTM Freezing, which I worked on last decade. The castle in the background is called Woodfort, which I suddenly discover I have posted before.

[alanshemper]

“There's already American contractors here, bidding to rebuild this joint. You're gonna tell me. You know, that's all the defense department is. We're bodyguards for American contractors. [...] The U.N.? They don't... We own the U.N. The U.S government owns the U.N. We foot the bill for the U.N. The U.N. does what we want it to. Except for who? Libya and Cuba. So what. We wanted to go in there in a week, we'd take those over if we wanted to anyways. But we foot the bill for the U.N, they'll vote how we want them to vote. That's just our, that's, that's the U.S puppet. You guys should know that you're, you've been in college, I haven't!”

[andreadarcyart]

Up close look at both Cassidy and Delia:

Challengers but make it Hanamusa with some Yamushipping. I thought this fit them really well (I genuinely just wanted to draw them in tennis outfits fighting over Jessie 😂 I have an outfit I want to draw Jessie in too, if I ever find the time to get it done) and I have a few more ideas for this tennis AU, so fingers crossed I’ll get them drawn once things have settled down at work 🤞

I’m also advocating for a 🍉 family, their last two fundraisers resulted in their PayPal accounts being blocked by PayPal, so I'm organising on behalf of them with their permission and transferring the money raised to them through the bank (This is me being completely transparent for anyone that is uncomfortable, if you are, please do not donate, I will completely understand). (The money that was originally raised isn't lost, PayPal is holding on to it, but they can't fight to get it back in their current conditions since they're moving a lot and WiFi is unstable at the best of times. So if you donated before, do not worry, they'll be able to use that money to rebuild once they've evacuated to a safe place). I’m currently not open for commissions because I’m burnout from the last lot I’ve had to do (it’s the exact reason I don’t do commissions, but this is an emergency), but I am raffling off the Across the Spiderverse Artbook (never used, might as well be brand new) to anyone that donates at least €10. Also, if we manage to get to €7k I’ll draw James and Jessie in all of Barbie and Ken’s outfits from the live action Barbie movie (James will be dressed as Barbie and Jessie as Ken).

[the-fandom-crossroads]

Folks talking about Game Devs dropping Unity or how it won't hurt small indie devs with under 200,000. Are missing the point.

Some of these Unity games can't change to another engine because they have years of code piled on top of each other at this point. aka POKEMON GO. They'd basically have to rebuild the game from scratch.

Not to mention Unity is mostly used by phone app games or Indie's that are lucky enough to get picked up by console. Indie games on Mobile easily pass 200,000 downloads. Temple Run 1 and 2 are in Unity, Crossy Road, Angry birds 1 and 2, and Hearthstone. All of these past 200,000 downloads years ago but aren't bringing in money now except hearthstone.

The Developers will do what happened to the first Angry birds app. They'll take it down, build it in a new engine for "HD", and add a shit ton of micro transactions. We are about to lose countless original versions of the OG pre lootbox mobile games.

We are also about to lose some of the biggest Indie games of the last decade. Among Us, Plague Inc., 7 Days to die, the original Slenderman game and it's sequel, I am Bread, Ori and the Blind Forest, Dream Daddy, Overcooked 1 & 2, Pathfinder online, Cup Head, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Oxygen Not Included, Bloons Tower Defense 6, Beat Saber, Subnautica, The Stanley Parable, Untitled Goose Game, Power Washing Simulator, Fall Guys, Inscryption, Phasmophobia

And the big one FUCKING HOLLOW KNIGHT. Silk song has already been pushed back out of this year specifically because it's being made by a team of like 3 people. It is so close to being finished and now they are being told they have to start over from scratch basically. Hollow Knight got over 200,000 downloads from being on playstation and was eventually put on Playstations subscription service. Every cent they made from hollow knight has gone back into making silk song. Which might now be delayed by multiple years and oh they are going to have to use some of that funds to pay unity now. Or find a way to get out of a contract with playstation. Because folks will keep downloading Hollow Knight for free and Unity will send the Hollow Knight team the bill.

oh and there's one more teeny tiny game made in Unity that you guys might not want to suddenly disappear. One with almost 3 years of monthly code updates, one with 139 million downloads to date, and 4.8 million monthly users.

Genshin. Guys Genshin Impact is made completely in Unity and that's not a game that can have it's code just copy and pasted to another engine.

[fairuzfan]

Update: Gazans Remain Steadfast

Even through all this destruction, the people of Gaza remain steadfast in their determination to stay in their homeland. They'll rebuild and rebuild a thousand times over no matter what the occupational army does to it.

Mahmoud Abusalama wants to make sure everyone outside of Gaza understands how steadfast the people are. Remember, even if all this happens, this is our homeland and Palestinians will not have their spirits broken! The colonial entity of 'Israel' will never take that away!

If you'd like to support the people of Gaza directly, you can donate to HelpGazaChildren through the link below.

HelpGazaChildren Notion Site || #helpgazachildren tag

GoFundMe Link

[ID: Mahmoud Abusalama sweeps away rubble in a room with walls missing as he speaks to the camera. The camera pans out and shows the complete and total destruction of Jabaliya refugee camp.]

[ploridafanthers]

oh, also the electricians mentioned that some people in this area still have the original 1930s-50s wiring to their original 1930s-50s houses

if i wanted to live on the edge i’d wing-walk airplanes or something because that’s less bills if i’m unlucky, not more

[maximumzombiecreator]

I've seen a lot of posts recently where people say they can't find players to play non-5e TTRPGs with. As someone who moves countries every few years, I've had to rebuild my roster of local TTRPG players from scratch a number of times. Here's how I do it.

Caveats first: while I've done this in small cities, I have always done it in cities. If you're in, like, a rural environment, you might just not have enough interested people around. You can always do it online in that case. I'm not really going to cover finding players online, except to say you should probably look for communities for the specific system you want to play. Most of them are enthusiastically looking for new participants. Especially game masters.

Okay, first things first, you gotta find people. I generally find I get better results if the search is location first. That is, rather than using city-wide or regional Looking For Group type internet groups, I look for physical locations that host gaming groups. Local game stores, public libraries, gaming cafes/bars, etc.

Being location first helps avoid some common bad behaviours. Online LFG groups often have a few shitty people hanging around who can't find long term groups because they're shitty. They'll jump at the opportunity to join new groups where people don't know them, because everyone else knows better than to game with them. But location-based groups are better at filtering this. Someone who harasses people at an LGS can be banned from the store, but decentralized online groups struggle to handle these situations in my personal experience.

Being location first also solves the next problem, which is giving you a location to play. Eventually, when I have a long term group, I'll host games in my home. But there needs to be a level of trust before that feels safe, and we're looking for randoms, so for now we need a public gaming venue. If, for whatever reason, there aren't dedicated gaming spaces where you can do this, I've had the most success gaming in cafes or restaurants during off peak hours. I've run a bunch of games in restaurants from, like, 2pm-5pm on a Saturday, and as long as you're buying drinks and some snacks or something, and being polite and non-disruptive, it's typically not too hard to get permission.

Now, if that local group has enough interest in a non-5e system that I'm interested in running, I'll happily do that, and it's pretty free from there. Most people who are willing to play one other system will gladly try others if they find they like playing with you. But even in big cities, I feel it's pretty often the case that postings for local games of other systems don't wind up actually finding successful groups.

So, here is the bit where, unfortunately, finding people to play non-5e games with involves playing some 5e. Community groups are always looking for more GMs to run games, so I will set out to run a number of short 5e adventures, each with different groups. These are typically oneshots that I have the option of extending for another 1 or 2 sessions.

I always run adventures that I've written myself for these, because I want my particular GMing style to really come through. Looking for players is a two way street. I'm looking for people I like GMing for, but I'm also looking to make sure they know what they're getting. Especially if I'm going to ask them to play a system they've never tried, they should know that there's going to be something they enjoy. So, these short adventures are full of the types of silly but sincere NPCs I tend to run, the open-ended scenarios I prefer, the tropes I favour, etc. If someone isn't going to enjoy playing with me, I want them to know it from this adventure.

I structure the adventures to give me a lot of flexibility in terms of how long they run. They're nearly always mysteries, but with some active component to the mystery, so that if things drag or dawdle I can have the villain show up and force a final confrontation. They're also structured to have a natural "next thing." You find and defeat the villain, but there's an implied next villain you'll be going after. That way, if the group is working well and I want to continue, it's easy to present the option to the group. But if I'm not interested in continuing with the group, the next thing can just serve as an "and the adventures continue" implied epilogue, and the game still feels complete.

I don't like players just bringing their own character sheet to the table. Someone who brings a disruptive character can ruin a session without me getting much useful information out of it, other than that I don't want to play with that person. And if it ruins the experience for the other players, I'm often out the opportunity to game with those people, through neither of our faults. I've experimented with both asking players to submit their characters in advance or making them choose between a collection of premade characters. The former is a good check for whether people will put in a basic amount of effort and follow instructions, but it can dissuade people who are just looking to dip their toes into playing for the first time. The latter can turn off players who are into crunchy games and are excited about character building. As a result, I'll usually choose the approach based on what non-5e system I'm currently most excited about running. Do I want to get together a group for a rules-light game? Premade characters it is. Looking to run some PF2e? Please submit your character sheet in advance. Some locations also do more drop-in based games, in which case it's premades all day.

As I'm running the game, I'm observing the players. There's a simple vibe check, obviously. Do I like playing with this person? But I'm also looking at how they play. What are they here for, what's exciting them? Are they struggling with finding optimal turns in combat, or do they like mastering a system? Are they curious about the world, or do they glaze over when the spotlight isn't on them? Do they light up in dialogue scenes? Do they want to try crazy things outside of their on-sheet abilities? Remember, later, I'm going to try to persuade this person to try to play a game they've never played before. I need to know what specifically is going to excite them.

I have (always with permission) recorded sessions before to go over in making these choices, but honestly even just a few small reminder notes will help me unravel things later. If a session goes well, I'll ask at the end for people to give me their contact information if they'd be interested in playing again. Non-committal, at their comfort, and it doesn't single out people that I don't want to play with. I can always just not call them. Usually I find I'm interested in playing again with a little more than half of the players I meet this way. In my experience, it's fairly rare for a player to say they're not interested in playing again, TTRPGs rule and there's a DM shortage.

What I usually do is keep running these until I have enough people in mind to run something else, even if it isn't the system I'm most excited about. Probably it would be better to spend more time in this starter phase building up more connections, but after running like 4-5 5e adventures, I'm usually more than ready to run anything else, and if I have to shelve my Lancer ideas because I've mostly found crunch-averse players, I'm usually fine with that.

So, next comes the invites. Now, most players I meet this way will eventually be open to playing most games, but listen: you can put people well out of their comfort zone for their third TTRPG, but you gotta be real careful with their second. Most of the time, the game I'm inviting people to will be their first real exposure to a non-5e TTRPG. If they don't like it, they will run back to the safety of 5e and you will never get them out of it again. So I am very careful in picking the right system for the players I am inviting.

Whatever the new system I want to run is, I will set up a pilot session for it. I am very clear to players that I will teach them the system at the session, they do not need to know it in advance. Eventually, when I have a reliable group of TTRPG people to play with, I'll expect them to be able to pick up systems without a ton of help, but for players that are only used to the complexity of 5e, the idea of learning a new system is daunting. I rehearse the teaching of the game session. It's the only thing for TTRPGs I ever rehearse, but I want to know down pat how I'm going to quickly teach a new system and make it feel approachable and non-threatening. I'm also very clear that this will be a single session, with the possibility of turning into a campaign if we like it. All of this is structured to feel very safe. No initial learning required, no long term commitment, with a GM you already know you like.

But even as safe as that is, you still have to pitch the system. Why should the player be excited about playing this new game? Don't go all TTRPG nerd on them and explain all the details of the system, or use a bunch of jargon. Give them one or two things to be excited about with short, detailed anecdotes to back them up.

"We're going to be playing Blades in the Dark. It's a game where you play a gang of criminals in a haunted, steampunk dystopia. Every session you'll do heists, but instead of meticulously planning them, you start right in the action, and when you need to have planned for something, you can do a flashback scene to explain your preparation. One group I ran this for got busted by guards during an early heist, but used a flashback to create a scene where they had gotten a buddy of theirs a job as one of the guards, and he helped them out of the situation. And for some reason they fell in love with this bumbling goof I improvised to be the buddy, and then on a bunch of future jobs they kept using flashbacks to get him jobs wherever they were robbing. So this one idiot was just a de-facto crew member who worked a dozen different inside jobs despite being about as sharp as an eraser. And eventually they fucked up and got him killed, but they brought him back as a ghost, because you can do that in Blades in the Dark."

I find using a specific example of play really helps get peoples' imaginations going, which is what is going to help them say yes. And that example is tailored to what I know that player vibes with, what it is I think that makes them a good fit for this game.

The last detail about the invites is that I'm telling them, not asking them. It is not, "Hey, are you interested in playing this new game?" It's "I'm going to be running this new game. If you're interested in playing, please let me know what times work for you." If you're asking, you're going to get some "well but can it be 5e?" If you're telling, then they can choose to learn a new game in order to keep playing TTRPGs with a GM they know they like, or they can choose not to play at all.

Once you get enough yesses for a game, you run it, and then from there you're on your own. I think those are basically just friends you have at that point, and I'm not gonna tell you how to have friends.

Hopefully at least one person finds all that useful!