#which is an rpg which is always nice to see

[madegeeky]

Free Games Roundup

On Epic (29 June 2023, 10am cst)

Experience an atmospheric hunting game like no other in this realistic and visually breathtaking open world. Immerse yourself in the atmospheric single player campaign, or share the ultimate hunting experience with friends.

On Indiegala (til ???)

Top Burger is an exciting fast food simulation game. You just opened a burger restaurant, let's see if you can put together burgers fast enough to satisfy your ever growing number of customers!

On GoG (til ???)

Hell Division is a third-person shooter where you pilot lethal drones. Become a pilot of an armed military drone and plunge into adrenaline-fueled action set in a cyberpunk city divided between two ruthless corporations. The confrontation is inevitable, the question is – will you prevail?

[erose-this-name]

Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius). 

His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.

The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways.

We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.

Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.

What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.

He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional.

(Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)

If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting

Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf.

(see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)

Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.

You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!

In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.

But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.

Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.

Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.

So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.

In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader? 

What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.

I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.

But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.

Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.

Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.

[thydungeongal]

Okay, so we know that Gygax was a misogynist and fascist. I read the forum posts with the infamous "nits make lice", and yes, it's a description of in-universe attitude, but he then went on a pretty fash rant about an eye for an eye being just and pacifism being "slave morality", so I don't see reason in figuring out his specific kind of bigotry.

Arneson was also a fascist. Guy who wrote Tekumel was so as well.

Were any of founders of hobby not racists and misogynists? Tunnels and Trolls looks promising, because there is a woman who was always a player but is credited in all editions for her contributions, so I hope misogyny is not foundational of hobby, even for generic fantasy games. But also one of spells sounds as a very bad taste racist joke (mind control spell was called "yassa massa" until 5th edition included), and I remember that in his space rpg from 1976 there was an illustration that was a very bad taste caricature of Israel-Palestine conflict (spaceship with crew dressed in stereotypical Arab clothing is being chased by ship in the shape of Star of David, I don't remember what did speech bubble say).

But what about the rest? Do you know how normal were contents of early editions of RuneQuest and other games that are considered foundational? Classic Traveller looks fine, but only because it doesn't feature any topics where racism or misogyny could be obvious, so I am not sure. Was there like, a sensible amount of women early in the hobby? I know there were some from reading old ass magazines that occasionally published materials written by women. But do you know more about it?

Not gonna lie, this is just me feeling guilty and bad because of one article that takes a pretty gender essentialist outlook on everything, but thinking that I enjoy something "fundamentally male" is Not Nice, girl

First edition RuneQuest is refreshingly lacking in a lot of the casual racism and misogyny of its time, and Greg Stafford was genuinely interested in culture and mythology. It's not perfect by any means but I think RuneQuest does treat the cultures he takes influence from with a lot of respect.

Traveller is funny because first edition Traveller has a whole bit about "we default to using he/him pronouns for characters but that does not mean that they have to be men, by Jove!" which is a huge dub for the he/him lesbians.

As for whether there were a lot of women in the early days of the hobby, I don't know. But I know that Iron Crown Enterprises (creators of Rolemaster) had at least some women in their employ, some of them credited as playtesters (in addition to the charmingly eighties attribution of "and various other young dudes and dudettes).

But ultimately, screw Gygax and his gender essentialist ideas. There have been lots of women in the space since its inception and while the roots of the hobby may have been male-dominated the very fact that so many women have flocked into RPGs is all the evidence you need that this is not a hobby that necessitates a male brain whatever the fuck that means. Gygax may have managed to catch lightning in a bottle with D&D but that doesn't mean we have to give him the final word on everything RPG-related forever. Also because he said a lot of other really dumb shit besides the "RPGs are for the male brain," so like he wasn't the esoteric genius people sometimes try to paint him as.

[wilwheaton]

My friends and I were playing DDO the other day when we got wheaton'd by your dm and commentary narration. It's always nice to see you pop up in unexpected places.

Oh thanks! I had such a good time doing that. Liam O'Brien directed the session, which leads me to share a fun fact!

The Critical Role group that he's part of had played their very first game together the day before we recorded the session, and they were going to try out playing together on a livestream.

He was a fantastic director, and I loved working with him.

If I recall correctly, you can discover and unlock some secret recordings of the two of us talking about RPGs in general.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Manga Recommendation: Tower Dungeon

So looks like Arkus Rhapsode is here to recommend another fantasy manga after the last one. So this time we're going for a bit of a different flavor with the series Tower Dungeon by by Tsutomu Nihei who you may know as the creator of Blame! and Knights of Sidonia.

Now I've known about this series for a bit even though it is relatively new. Having only started last year in Monthly Shonen Sirius. But I remember its announcement from people like Manga Mogul and hearing Makoto Yukimura (Author of the incredible Vinland Saga) recommending it. Now I always loved Sword and sorcery so I was gonna read it eventually, but it just wasn't translated. However, now being able to read the available chapters, I can say this is a very different type of fantasy series.

The premise is very basic: An evil sorcerer has killed a nation's king and kidnapped a Princess and now the royal knights need to ascend the "Dragon Tower" to save her. One battalion has conscripted a young man named Yuva for assisting troops medically has found he has impressive strength. Now Yuva must strengthen himself for the journey ahead as they explore the deadly tower.

Now like all simple premise stories, the real strength is in execution. And unlike the other fantasy series I've talked about before which have bucked the trend of "RPG fantasy" be leaning more into a traditionalist fantasy stories a la Tolkien, this goes for the more realist fantasy of something like Berserk or Dark Souls.

The world of Tower Dungeon may have things like magic and dragons, but it is a dingy, dirty, and lacks any frills. Knights wear heavy armor and people are covered in blood and scars from their adventures.

The mighty Dragon Tower itself? The most iconic thing about this series and the basis of the adventure? Looks like this. This isn't an opulent tower, this is a massive imposing structure where monsters dwell.

However, unlike some grim dark or edgy fantasies, this world isn't indulgent in its darkness. The violence and death are never cool or cheap. They are simply the way the world is. Even when magic exists, the world is still like Medieval Europe and all the "joys" that come from it.

The people as well are similar. These aren't romanticized or polished fantasy archetypes that often come with the idea of a Dungeons and Dragons style adventure, these feel like average joes plucked off the streets having to do a job. If you are say a fan of something like Chainsaw Man, this sort of post modern emphasis on people acting like regular weirdos and not some "anime characters." And I think that is something quite nice that even in a fantastical world, we can see our regular selves in them.

But that's just the story, what about the art? Well if you've noticed this series does have a very minimalist style. Something similar to that of Land of the Lustrous or Chainsaw Man. These almost scratchy and not the most detailed designs that make use of their simplicity to create this very unique atmosphere.

Creature designs themselves are less fantastical and more grody. Feeling as if they come from an off shoot of man rather than some majestic beast. Right down to the cat people.

This series is still new and sadly hasn't been officially translated yet. I've had to use mangadex to read this, so my heart goes out to the translator team. I can understand that this may be a niche that's not for everyone, but its something that feels like such a good sign for fantasy as a genre. A genre that I think has somewhat been stagnated in popular belief with the greater emphasis on Urban Action manga and the reliance on escapist fantasy anime like isekai. To see a more dirty but down to earth take on the premise, I highly recommend it.

[nica-my-beloved]

Things I Love and Dislove About Ikemen Games

These are my opinions!

CONTAINS ADULT CHARACTERS

You don't know how much this means to me because most of the time I try finding shoujo mangas I end up with stories that involve high school kids.

I'm a die heart fan of demon romance but majority of the shoujo manga that explores supernatural beings involves a 1000 year old demon king falling in love with a 16 year old high school girl. This sickens me not only because of the age gap but one of the party is a freaking minor.

As an adult, I'm so happy the Ikemen Games doesn't involve younger characters or at least characters that are 'minor' as a romantic partner.

MC's ONLY JOB IS TO SIMPLYFY THE STORY

I have said this before, MCs are just props to simplify the story and characters to us because the writers think we're too dumb to understand what the character is saying. They're like Paimon so that we don't use our braincells to understand the characters better.

I wish they didn't do that and have MCs backstories that describes their personality. I mean, all the MCs want to 'prove' to the male leads that they wanna be 'strong' but I'm tired of this trope.

Why does MCs have to always be innocent and prove themselves? Why does she always want to 'understand' the male leads? Can't we...for once have a romance that doesn't involve MCs teaching male leads true love?

Also STOP give MCs odd jobs! Book stall employee...letter carrier? I mean who is happy and satisfied doing this? How about giving the high-paying jobs like Auditor or Businesswoman or Scientist or etc etc...I know Mai is a fashion designer and businesswoman and Mitsuki is a travel agent turned maid. Alice is a baker and Yoshino is a pharmacist. The only MCs that continues to follow the path of their dreams is Mai and Yoshino.

MATURE ROMANCE

I enjoy seeing two adults slowly fall in love.

There is something different about teenagers falling in love vs adults falling in love. The romance is more realistic. They don't talk about how they're gonna plan their future together or which college they're going to go instead their chat is much more deep and that's refreshing.

NO BAD ENDINGS

Happy endings are nice. Everyone deserves one! But when there are no bad endings, the story won't have stakes.....and when there are no stakes, I can't take any gunshot sounds, blank screen and MCs saying 'Is this the end?' seriously.

Just stop being cowards writers! Put some bad endings!!

FAIR SHARE OF ROMANCE

Although I have played my fair share of Maiden games, majority of them are not that romantic.

I love cute romance moments to lighten up the mood and I really need them. Ikemen games delivers that too well....way too well...

I do have some criticism for random steamy scenes, I don't mind as long as they have context and mood.

The story is not so story focused all the time and also has time for mischievous romance which I like! It helps in calming me down and enjoy at the same time.

BULLSHIT GACHA SYSTEM AND NON-EXISTING GRINDING SYSTEM (Not very F2P friendly)

Even though Genshin's gacha system is shit (you need mf 90 wishes to get a guaranteed 5 star and 180 wishes to get the limited 5 star you want!) I still think it's ways better than the gacha system of these Ikemen Games.

Yes I agree that both the games are different in genre, one is an open world anime rpg and other is a maiden game with gacha mechanics. But that doesn't mean that I have to always pay to buy limited gacha tickets!! At least genshin gives us an open world to explore and grind primos (even though its time consuming)

Yes they do give limited tickets when you enter an event or complete the mission board but that's only ONE TICKET and you need 50 LIMITED TICKETS to get your guaranteed limited 5 star card. On the other hand, they give out many standard tickets but what am I gonna do with it if they aren't gonna update the standard banner?

These games are NOT F2P friendly and if you wanna...like say, want rank no.1 in an event you'd have to save a lot of items.

Ofc I know about the subscription thing and you do indeed get a lot of items, but the most essential thing for me is limited gacha tickets and diamonds because I wanna collect as many beautiful cards as possible and you don't get them from these monthly subscriptions. It's a waste of $5 very month. I'd rather buy a nice hair care or skin care items from that.

INTERESTING SETTINGS

I have my criticism in some of their stories but I can't deny that I LOVEE their story settings. Their premise for each game is solid to the point it makes me wanna actually try it.

This is something I find very rare in 'shoujo' genre.

For example, I don't like Vampire themed games because they suck! (both figuratively and literally) but Ikemen Vampire interests me because they take real historical figures and makes them vampire, which is a really cool idea! You don't know but I'd die to get myself in situation like that because it would be an honor to meet some great historical figures, chat with them and make them lose all their brain cells just like me. I would die to meet especially Isaac Newton and grill him for making those torturous physics theories that gave me brain tumors in my school.

Very cool setting! I can't wait to see what's in store for us in the future!!!

EVENTS ARE INSANELY BORING

I've never enjoyed a single story event from Ikemen Villains. They are boring and makes me fall asleep immediately at chapter 1. I think that kinda spread to Ikemen Prince because I barely open Ikemen Prince app now.

I honestly don't find the stories of these events interesting at all. It always feels like 'I have seen this before' maybe in some other game or some other manga.

And the Collections events.....yeah, I hate them! I wish they never existed!!! They keep the fan-loved characters at the butt-end of the list where 90% of the players don't even make it unless they burn their whole month's salary. I know that's why they do these anniversary elections because I bet if Sariel was the most voted character, his story would have been the most expensive one to get.

VERY LIKEABLE MALE LEADS

This is a personal thing but I love charismatic male leads a lot! Male leads with a lot of suave and beauty! Yes I care about these things when I play gacha games okay! I play gacha games to look at hot guys (because I know I'm never gonna get one in real life!)

But I also love that the devs puts an effort to make them feel good too. So I wanna give a shoutout to them!!! 'KEEP GOING!!! JUST DON'T MAKE TRIGGERING MEN WHO SAYS 'I'LL KILL YOU'!!!

[fantasyfantasygames]

The Fall of the House of Crusher

The Fall of the House of Crusher, Wild World Entertainment, 2018

No connection to Wesley or Beverly.

I have been very happy in the past decade to see more and more games that get outside the traditional RPG box. I like fantasy adventures and sci-fi merchant ventures and maybe some modern fantasy, but we have a lot of that. So when other kinds of games come along, even if I wouldn't play them myself, I'm always intrigued.

The Fall of the House of Crusher (FoHoC, pronounced like faux-hawk) is a drama that follows a pro wrestler and his family as events unfold and unravel in their lives. The eponymous Crusher has been a heel for years, both in the ring and out. His wife is cheating on him with his best friend and he knows but hasn't called them on it yet. His daughter, "Generation", also a wrestler, is infatuated with a new wrestler who's a face in the ring, but Crusher knows he's an asshole outside it. You pick up the pre-gens and make a few tweaks (including gender options). Then play what is assumed to be a three-part game, whether that's three acts in one day or across multiple sessions.

One of my favorite bits is that all of your moves (this is a PbtA-type game) are both wrestling moves and emotional moves. It's not that you have to choose which version you're using - every move does both things at the same time. So the DDT dazes someone, which switches their stance to "unready", which means your next move is more likely to land. Then you can hit them with a Giant Swing, which forces them to Reset, losing any momentum they had. That can be physical, with the slam and the spin, and at the same time it can be emotional, where you stun someone with a revelation and then turn the tables on them to force them out of the argument they've been building.

Another cool piece is how you switch from playing your character to playing the crowd. When you're in the limelight, it's assumed that you have an audience. It might be a wrestling match, an argument at an outdoor restaurant, an argument at an outdoor restaurant that devolves into a wrestling match, a date at a movie theater where the other moviegoers are heckling you and it becomes a wrestling match, etc. There's a lot of assumed wrestling is what I'm saying. The mechanics only cover wrestling.

The game definitely has a good ending and a bad ending, and several mixed ones. They give short suggestions for other ways things might go, but honestly I think "the wedding" and "the divorce" cover a lot of ground.

In the end this might make a better LARP than tabletop game. The story could be condensed, the mechanics could be adjusted, you could keep the PC/audience switching for major events... I could see this running at Intercon very nicely. You just need a strict reminder that no actual wrestling moves are to be performed.

[zhoudadudugongjin]

Hey there I’m getting confused so I just thought I’d ask. You post a lot about NIF, various items with the word Kingdom, and now AA. The thing is a lot of the names seem to be the same and the faces(?)

Are these shows/stories related, if so how, and is there a watch order you’d recommend?? Thanks :)

Oh hello there I'M GLAD YOU ASKED

So.

The Three Kingdoms era was a period of Chinese history that spanned from about the end of the Han dynasty in 189AD to the the year 280AD (at which point China was finally re-unified). It was always a very popular era for the country, which gave rise to a lot of popular heroes. The first well-known person to make a full narrative out of the events was a fellow called Luo Guanzhong, who wrote a ~800k word novel called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the 14th century, a highly romanticised (lol) version of events which brutalises some historical figures (r.i.p Zhou Yu) and glorfies others (incl. one of China's greatest blorbos, Zhuge Liang).

Here he is, in various forms:

So I started by reading the book, mostly because it's one of the Four Great Classic Chinese Novels, and I wanted to learn a bit more about actual Chinese history and culture instead of just watching endless fantasy.

And then after the book, I discovered that there are unsurprisingly a LOT of adaptations of it! Some are more faithful to the novel, others more faithful to history, and some are just... *War flashbacks from the few episodes I watched of The Three Kingdoms RPG*

As far as I am aware, the two main adaptations that attempted to serialise the whole goddamn story rather than just some parts of it, are the 1994 TV adaptation, and the 2010 remake. I decided to watch the 2010 first because I liked the look of it (and I also found a nice HD download of, with good subtitles).

The Advisors Alliance is kinda like the "bad guy POV" adaptation which focuses solely on the story of Sima Yi, who shows up towards the middle of ROT3K and (SPOILER) basically wins in the end. He's not actually a bad guy, but he's often portrayed as the antagonist because he was on the opposite side to history's greatest blorbo, Zhuge Liang.

It can get a bit confusing because this fellow, Yu Hewei, seems to REALLY LIKE the three kingdoms era because he has so far starred in no less than FOUR different adaptions as various characters. But he decided to really confuse everyone by being Zhuge Liang's beloved liege lord Liu Bei in the 2010 adaptation, as well as Liu Bei's primary sworn enemy Cao Cao in the Advisors Alliance (2017). So yeah, we all like to laugh about that.

Yu Hewei every time he sees someone is making a new ROT3K adaptation:

As for Nirvana in Fire, that's pure fiction and functionally unrelated to The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (though perhaps the author took some inspiration, who knows?) But the main female lead is played by the same woman in both AA and NIF, the delightful Liu Tao:

And both shows also share another cast member, Wang Jinsong, who plays "disillusioned old friend of the king/emperor who now wants a divorce".

As for which you want to watch first? Well I guess that's up to you. Nirvana in Fire is a GREAT piece of fiction and is certainly more popular fandom-wise. If you're interested in digging your teeth into some messy, bloody political history full of homoerotic yearning, watch The Three Kingdoms. And AA is kind of like, a cross between the two!

P.S Red Cliff (2008) is another good fun adaptation that focuses on just a small part of the three kingdoms story, and has what I think is personally the best (or at least, fairest and kindest) of all the Zhou Yu portrayals.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for telling my friend I don’t like talking to her?

🏠 so I can find it later

I had this online friend for about three years. We met each other because of a mutual friend and eventually started to get along. We’d message each other all the time, or rather, she’d message me all the time. Like, I’d unlock my phone by the end of the day and there’s be other 20 messages (usually a long text split in various messages, like, a line per message), usually to talk about fandom stuff, since we enjoyed most of the same things, and particularly about Homestuck.

After some time, this habit of hers got annoying and I stopped replying to her, and she eventually also stopped messaging me. We remained friends and joined a RPG server together. Things were chill until she and this other person who was in the server started talking about how much they like g*mkar (censoring it because I don’t wanna clog the ship tag, and also I don’t want her to find this kahdkska).

For context, this ship was one of the only things we talked about I didn’t enjoy. I really dislike this ship and her constant pestering me about it made me hate it even more. She wouldn’t force me to ship it, but she’d talk about it all the time, always posting about it on Twitter and constantly retweeting fanart of the characters, which really didn’t help my situation and only made me hate it even more since I was practically forced to see them every time I opened my feed.

So I started complaining about the pairing on the server, I said they were a terrible combination and that it was an example of people romanticizing neglect. Eventually other people in the server joined me to complain about it and my friend and the other person she was talking to stopped talking about it.

She then came to me privately telling me that she didn’t like what I did, that it wasn’t nice of me to complain about something that she likes while she was talking about it with someone else. And I replied “it’s not the ship that’s the issue. It’s you. I don’t like talking to you. Talking to you doesn’t make me happy” I also complained about how clingy she was (although I did recognize it was partially my fault for never telling her I didn’t like it). She apologized for being so overbearing before and told me she had been working on herself since we stopped talking and that she didn’t do that anymore, which I was very grateful for. I did not apologize for complaining about the pairing though.

We ended it at that and a few days later she blocked me and left the server we had joined. We haven’t spoken ever since but I’m mature enough to recognize that the friendship is over.

I don’t miss her, but I do wonder if I should’ve handled things different sometimes.

So am I the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[eemamminy-art]

Hi, I've been seeing you post a lot of FFXIV stuff, and I've been kind of interested in trying it for a long while but am absolutely broke. Do you think it's worth getting into even if it's just the free trial version?

Omg yes!! The free trial honestly has a LOT in it, it takes you through the base game (A Realm Reborn) and the first two expansions (Heavensward and Stormblood, the latter of which is my favorite in the whole storyline), which goes up to level 70. You have a few limitations on the free trial, such as being unable to send private messages or join free companies (guilds, basically), but you can still party up with people and fully engage with the story and gameplay! They also have made it now where if you want to have a solo experience, the main scenario has support for partying with a group of NPCs instead of other players too, though there are a few parts where you'll need to play with real people. But I might be presuming too much, maybe you like the social aspect of MMOs :D

The character customization is really nice! There are a bunch of different races to play as, though sadly two of them will be locked behind a paid subscription (viera, which are bunny-people, and hrothgar, which are like a lion anthro race), but all the others are available on the free trial. I love making OCs in it, it's a lot of fun! I'm really fond of roegadyn, which are giants basically, and elezen, which are elves but if the elves were weird gangly pointy things. There's also cat and lizard kemonomimi (miqo'te and au ra respectively), chibis as the smallfolk race (lalafells), and stock standard humans in two varieties (midlander and highlander hyurs, one is like a normal human and the other are like bodybuilders). I'm probably forgetting something but.... Yeah!

The story is really good... ✪ ω ✪ Like extremely good!! I have been a fan of Final Fantasy for my whole life and not really ever much for multiplayer games, but FFXIV's story grabs hold of you in a way that a single player rpg does!! It's amazing! I've played it on and off since the ps3 beta of the game a decade ago, it's really special to me :3

I might be biased because I have like, nearly 12000 hours logged of playtime but.. yeah I think it's worth getting into ahaha

If you had specific questions about it I'd be glad to answer! I'm honestly kind of surprised to get an ask like this since I have been posting my art from ffxiv for the last few years, but I'm assuming you followed me for something else since I draw a variety of things! But always glad to share the gospel about this beloved game ahaha

[christiansorrell]

TTRPG Read-Through: Patchwork World

Here is a read-through I did last year (originally posted on Twitter) of one of the most unique PbtA games I've ever read: Patchwork World by Aaron King! - Christian

Credits up first. I know a lot of these folks and they are really cool! Excited to dig into this. I've heard good things, and it's been a while since I've read or played any Powered by the Apocalypse.

This is a cool, strong set up for me. I really like settings that ask characters to face a changing world and either take up change themselves or work to restore the old way of things. It's a headspace I find myself in a lot IRL these days so it's fun to explore.

I'm interested to see how the no stats, no playbooks angle of this game works, considering playbooks are typically such a staple of PbtA games.

Standard three-tired success, mixed success, fail forward resolution for rolls here and questions on the moves determine your bonus to the roll. Easy peasy. +2 is the max bonus.

Other types of rolls are described here. Interested to see how they come into play. I also love clocks and use them in pretty much every game I run so it's nice to see those laid out here too.

We just love a lil guy, don't we folks?

A good chunk of the opening here is spent on laying out a lot of solid foundations of roleplaying generally. It feels like a book (so far) that would work for entirely new players. It doesn't feel essential for me, but I never mind a game that supports varied experience levels.

Character creation is wide open, especially since there aren't playbooks and the text stresses that character creation is very much worldbuilding because of this. Fate-like concepts and tags are in here too which are things I generally enjoy. I like the Drawback mechanic.

Moves are in the playback I set in the other room so I'm gonna go grab those. You get two chosen moves and everyone has access to a number of default moves. You've got three other life/XP things to keep track of too. I'm especially interested in Hex.

There are a lot of moves! They seem quite varied and often very weird, fitting well with the titular patchwork world. You can have a duck's slick soul to dodge more easily or a magical space suit or speak to birds or be good at cartography. Overwhelming, but in an exciting way.

You also choose a community as a party. While PCs all have their original homelands (before the end of the old worlds), you know have a community that gets its own little sheet. This is a cool reshaping of the Gangs from Blades. I also like how the community can change over time.

Coming back to a PbtA game after months of more OSR-minded stuff, I think a lot of what these games contain are things that experienced players would say you could just do in any game at any time that it makes sense in the story, but I do find value in stating what's possible.

Esp since many players come to games with artificial limits on their options (whether that's from video games, more traditional RPGs, etc.). I just think good GMing here requires making sure that the players don't limit themselves just to the bevy of explicit options either.

GM moves (mostly to guide the response to failed rolls). I really think the community aspect of this set up is one of the biggest appeals to me so far. That and the wild list of moves, which I'm sure makes for amazing parties of characters.

I always feel like it's never something I should be in my own writing (for some probably unnecessary reason), but I enjoy the first-person, casual writing style throughout the book. Makes for a very chill read.

Good to see this game employs the Branson Reese style of NPC naming.

Stress acts as a single catch-all health and challenge rating for NPCs. Ideally, I'd hope this would help lead to the PCs approaching encounters with more than just violence.

Sections like this are what I'm referring to when I say this book feels very friendly to new players. It's got little anecdotes and thoughts like this throughout.

Look, it's been a while since I've seen A Christmas Story but... it didn't have ghosts in it right?

There's a sample adventure in the back (which I'll skip for this read-through) plus loads of random tables. Some wonderfully bizarre stuff in the characters and faction tables. Really gives you a good idea for how gonzo you can go with the setting.

Love these two in particular

Optional rules include hard mode (which I just think is kind of funny to see in PbtA, but could be cool if you lean heavy into the post-apoc setting) and some optional moves. I like that some moves focus on romance, something I enjoy IRL but never think to focus on in games.

I was wondering why this was the sixth edition!

That's all for the book itself. Going back to the packet to dig into the things I missed. Some expected bits in here but always one or two unique options I really enjoy. Leaking hex is cool (and could have some troubling cascade effects in certain situations).

I definitely wish, at least in sitting down to read like this, that the contents of the player packet was also in the book itself. I think PbtA has this tendency of leading to loads of pages on the table, but it can make them very easy to pick up and play or to learn as you play.

That element is definitely here, but I think the vast number of wide-ranging moves and the excitement that would drum up in my player group would more than makeup for that initial overwhelming feel of "whoa, that's a lot of papers out on the table".

Overall, it's the most I've wanted to play a game in this style in a while. I like that the base setup for the world is very much up to the players to determine via the characters they make. I like that PCs here will probably feel unlike any other folks have played before.

The community aspect feels like where I'd want to center my story around, as a player. Seeing that shift and change over time feels like it would be very rewarding and would help lean into the "the old world is dead, what do we want the new world to look like?" theme I enjoy.

Because Aaron King is cool and recently hit a lot of Twitter followers, Patchwork Worlds is now Pay-what-you-want over on Itch.

I'm not sure if physical copies are readily available. For full disclosure (guess I should have said this up front), I got this copy for free from Aaron! Not for the purposes of this thread or anything, just for fun a while back.

Thanks for reading more ramblings from me! If you like to do that sort of thing, check out my newsletter - Missives from the MeatCastle. It's got writings on my work, cool stuff I've run across the web in the last month, and exclusive rpg stuff! https://meatcastle.substack.com

[senei]

rambling a little but uhhh something i love a lot about slay the princess(besides like literally everything else about it since i'm kind of latched onto it) is how the artwork is loose.

tldr it's a good way of showing that the 'cleanliness' of art isn't necessary, and you really shouldn't worry your head off about that kind of stuff. but the Entire word vomit is underneath

it's sooo sososo common seeing people make huge deals about their art being 'clean'.

the lineart needs to be nice and sharp, the rendering needs to be perfectly butter smooth, et cetera.. especially with the ai stuff going on, for some reason? it kind of varies from different communities/platforms, but it's always there in some form. hard to miss most of the time

i see so many people getting pressed over that kind of involuntary obligation they put on themself—and not to say i don't do that exact same thing at times myself!!! it really upsets me knowing the kind of toll it can take on motivation to actually just. draw whatever the fuck is bouncing in your head like an rpg slime idle.

ik the fact that the sprites weren't entirely polished wasn't on purpose. that it's just because of the sheer amount of them/the lack of emotional masochism needed to do the Entire Process on Each One as a Single Person. but it still means a lot to me.

it shows how the same exact idea can be communicated completely disregarding whether or not those kinds of little details aren't ironed flat.

in like 99% of people who look at something, they just go "ooouuh!....art coole👍 !!!!!!!!". they're not gonna give two shits on wings about stray lines or an underblended shadow or whatever.

or at least that's what i'd like to think. as an artist with ungodly chicken scratch not yet conceivable to man i haven't been told anything.

just do however much you wanna do it's silly little artworks not your holy purpose to which inaction holds eternal suffering as consequence or something

[moofahdrome]

In regard to your pin post, what games do you like to play? I'm always a sucker for hearing about other tabletops people enjoy.

Ooooooh thank you for asking!!! I'm a big sucker for easy to run character focused games like Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Masks: A New Generation, but I also love love love games with potential for really cool and creative combat like Eidolon: Become Your Best Self, Gubat Banwa, and LANCER.

My primary experience is with Powered by the Apocalypse games, but I'm looking to expand my horizons a bit in the future! Blades in the Dark is super cool, but other Forged in the Dark games appeal to me a lot, especially Brinkwood - The Blood of Tyrants, a super cool game about organizing a revolution against colonialist capitalist vampires.

There's really so many amazing games by queer indie creators out there - Apocalypse Keys recently had its full release, as did EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER the TTRPG! There's really something for everyone. I really need to play more Ryuutama for its lovely adventure vibes, Hard Wired Island for a return to true anticapitalist cyberpunk, as well as Flying Circus for amazingly accurate WWI-era plane action in a miyazaki-inspired setting! Other stuff I've had for a while but need to play are Monster Care Squad, Heart: The City Beneath, and Comrades, a Revolutionary RPG.

There's also plenty of nice, charming, slower paced games as well. Wanderhome is a beautiful pastoral journey game, where everyone comes together to heal a land and experience wonders. Our Traveling Home is inspired by Howl's Moving Castle and has everyone play a unique role as a queer found family. Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast just released, and it's an amazing episodic experience packed full of beautiful content!

One of my favorite game creators is Dinoberry Press, creator of fantastic titles like Justicar, What Waits Beneath, and GUN&SLINGER, a cool 2-3 player game where one person plays a magical gun and the other their haunted wielder. It's got a couple great extra modes of play, too, like SWORD&BEARER or MECH&PILOT !

And there's even more amazing games in development. Dinoberry's You're in Space and Everything's Fucked just funded, as did HELLPIERCERS: TACTICAL HARROWING ACTION. Guns Blazing and Wetrunners are really close to being funded, too, check them out! Some other great games that aren't fully complete but you can play right now are ICON, Bloodbeam Badlands, Red West, and In the Time of Monsters, all of which are some of the COOLEST things I have ever seen.

Feel free to ask more questions about any of these! I love talking about them and I'm thrilled to see interest in indie ttrpgs!!!

[thydungeongal]

Honestly I appreciate your blog a lot because, as someone who doesnt like DND, I always hate how a lot of the complaints about dnd I see are about it being crunchy or dense compared to more narrative games. Like I like pbta things and more flowy games, but I also play games with 40 skills and where a single attack in combat can be 4 rolls and usually hate when newer editions of games overly simplify mechanics

Its nice to see someone who plays Rolemaster of all things complain about dnd too. Ive never got the chance to play, but ive seen the charts from screenshots and while it seems fun it also seems very dense, so the insights on game design are always fun from someone liking those sorts of games

Thank you, I'm glad to hear it! :)

And to be quite honest: I also enjoy lighter games, including many PbtA games. Monsterhearts and Apocalypse World are easily in my top 10. I think a diverse RPG diet is important and a diet of nothing but D&D is bound to make for a very uh stupid and bad gut flora culture. But for RPGs. This metaphor has gotten away from me.

But yeah, I like crunchy games, I like lighter games, as long as the games have something to say and their mechanics actually contribute meaningfully towards some goal. Which actually goes a long way towards explaining my frustrations with D&D 5e and its play culture: not only is D&D 5e, like, actually, actively badly designed in places, but for the most part just kind of inoffensive and okay, its playerbase seem to actively resist the idea that the game's design itself might actually have a voice. Nah, the game is actually a toolkit system and if someone has an issue with the game being too combat-focused it's actually because they had a bad DM because a good DM can run a social intrigue campaign using D&D even though the game itself doesn't provide any structure to it, the rules don't matter as long as you have a good DM and everyone is having a good time and Bard horny fuck dragon have sex with dragon sex Bard

So anyway, that's bad. Meanwhile, Rolemaster, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Esoteric Enterprises, Dungeon Bitches, Blades in the Dark, Hypermall: Unlimited Violence, Triangle Agency; those are good.

[vintagerpg]

This is Death in Space (2021), an RPG about blue collar life (which is often miserable) in space (which is always hostile). In this, it is a cousin of Mothership, Alien, Those Dark Places and all the various other incarnations of industrial, deep space science fiction. Both the regular and the deluxe versions of the book make a good first impression, with a lovely design sense and very nice illustrations. I see a lot of folks shorthand the graphic design (and the play, honestly) as Mork Borg in space. I understand the impulse and there are definitely similarities, but that does the overall experience of the game a disservice.

The system is a minimal and D20-based. Character generation is highly random (there are lots of random tables in general; in this the relationship to Mork Borg is undeniable). The game focuses around the characters and their hub — a ship or station — that they work to maintain, which often requires taking jobs in order to fund or salvage the necessary material for maintenance. For the most part, the game universe — the Tenebrous System — is gritty and prosaic.

It isn’t entirely without mystery, though. Character progression accrues Void Points, which can turn into mutations (limited special abilities) or corruption (weird side-effects that hint at a stranger truth to existence). Likewise, when a character dies, they role on the Death in Space table to have a vision of how they were meant to die, implying something is fundamentally wrong with existence as the character experienced it. That…is extremely interesting!

Unlike the highly orchestrated Coriolis, Death in Space feels like a toy box and no clear indication of the right or wrong way to play with them. Want to play an Expanse-style game? Go for it. Want to do Dead Space? That’s maybe a little trickier, but doable. The implied universe is fascinating on its own merits but, after all, it remains just that: implied.

[tagedeszorns]

(Violetbirdie here) I think it's complicated due to a variety of issues. 40k as a franchise is huge, but it isn't the sort of thing that tends to have overlap with tumblr type fanspaces. It also doesn't help that 40k is a fractured fandom featuring tons of different factions, so it's not like a standard fandom where there are main characters and a main story that people will always flock to. The primarchs are the closest thing we have to that, which is why there is naturally more content for them. In addition, fandom itself is in a bit of a flux state and has been ever since the 2018 nsfw ban which caused a lot of people to leave for twitter, which is now undergoing its own huge changes right now (and I just hate twitter on principle).

I suppose the one thing I think would help, would be somehow getting the 40k tumblresque fandom space more consolidated as a whole. Like, somehow have a blog that is popular for all factions that posts headcanons about everything, thus getting people interested in parts they don't normally think about. Because 40k is a huge time investment to learn about. I've been listening to audiobooks for what feels like nonstop for over a month, and even then I could only ever feel confident telling people about Emperor's Children. So it naturally is harder for new people to get into the fandom and focus on some of the smaller things because there is just so much. It's almost how I view your blog. I check it daily for fun art/headcanons/just general character stuff, and you made me more interested in some of the captains and such. But even then, you have your focuses. So a space even more general where someone would reblog art from everything 40k would likely be nice? Maybe I just miss the livejournal days of fandom. As far as more engagement, I think having silly things like character weeks which encourages people to draw or write or talk about specific aspects is a huge benefit. It sets a schedule and makes people feel like they are shouting less into the void.

But as someone new here, maybe its my weird perspective, but I don't feel like things are getting less popular. If anything, from just checking AO3, it seems like things are only getting more popular for less of the reddit type and more for the Tumblr wanting to see hot dudes and their complicated feelings type. Also more people are getting into 40k in this side of the space through rogue trader. Like people I never talked to about 40k are starting to look into the series because they played Baldurs Gate 3, and needed a new RPG to play, and conveniently Rogue Trader is filling that for them. So, I'm optimistic if anything. Sorry about the long ramble! Just kinda dumping my thoughts out.

I love Tumblr because, unlike Twitter or Bluesky, it allows for way longer, way more elaborately structured posts. I love it when artists don't just slap their pics into a post and be done with it, but instead add stuff like maybe "I read this book, here's a quote, and it gave me this mighty need to draw this". Or "please listen to this music here while looking at my pic! It goes perfectly with it!". Or just a multi-paragraph-essay (preferably very unhinged) about the character in the upper left corner.

This in advance, so you can see I'm totally with you on the "miss Lifejournal"-thing, because blogs are so much better than just 500 characters, four pics and nothing else. And why I think Tumblr is a very good replacement for Lifejournal.

The multitude of Tumblr-blogs with their many different angles are such a treat and provide such a rich ecosystem! I follow artists posting exclusively admech-stuff, others solely Drukhari, some writers focussing on just one Astartes Legion ... it's phantastic and the depth of their niche-knowledge is mindblowing.

I agree with you that this will be overwhelming for new fans coming from rather monolithic stuff like Rogue Trader. And the key to keeping those new people involved and making them feel welcome is showing them all this variety without scaring them away.

Maybe this new feature Tumblr is working on, can be helpful here. I haven't read much about it yet, but it seems the "Community"-feature has the potential to bundle stuff in a way that's more approachable for new and old fans alike. Maybe there's room for your idea of having "character weeks" (I like that! Sounds very MacDonald's. I'll have Fabius with extra pickles, please! 😁).

I'm sharing your optimism that both the new games and maybe the new series/movies will bring a lot of new fans over and some of them may even stick around. I am a bit wary that there's the possibility of a MCU-situation starting to build up, but since Warhammer-lore is in a constant state of flux anyways this might just add some spice to the mix.

So, yeah, hope for the darkest of futures!