#wizard of ops

[fantasyfantasygames]

Pure Dysfunction

Pure Dysfunction, stop bothering me about a name games, 2017

Written by a game designer who had been to one too many bad cons, Pure Dysfunction (PD) is a game about running a gaming, comics, or other fandom convention. You play the con chair, ops, other officers, and volunteers dealing with your total inability to plan ahead.

Having been involved in the running of a con myself, it usually does not go this way, and you should thank the many people who made the event happen for their role in not having everything fall apart. This game takes all the bad stuff that happens at a dozen cons and crams them all into three (in-game) hectic days.

Your character is rated on four stats, each of which have a different scale. You have a Typing Speed (in words per minute), Sprint (in meters per second), Customer Service (rated in number of cards), and a Frustration Tolerance (rated in blocks, with 1 being good and 4 being bad) You use different resolution mechanics for each, so you'll have a deck of cards, a pair of d10s, and a Jenga tower on the table. You also may or may not have Card Access to the various rooms where events are happening, and that might change as you're forced to shuffle events from room to room. You spend an initial split of Enthusiasm and Experience on your stats - they add up to 10, but of course each stat costs differently. Completely separate from all that, you have an Archetype that determines what stuff you have access to. You might be an Otaku with a massive collection of anime and video equipment, a Tinkerer with a bajillion tools, the Dice Hoarder, etc.

The game comes with a few sample floor maps and schedules, from Genericon-sized to Gencon-sized. It also has several d66 tables of what can go wrong. The tables often point you to other tables, so generating an "encounter" (yup, they use that word on purpose) can take a few rolls. The events are mostly realistic - or maybe they're all realistic and I just haven't run into the more outlandish events. The game could run GMless if you wanted to have someone who's not in the scene play out the NPC interactions.

PD's main drawback is that it's a bit short. Much like a play about putting on a play and a movie about making movies, a game about game/anime/scifi cons only really works for people who have some experience in the arena already, or when you can provide lots of context. PD tells you what's going to happen, but if you're not familiar with the experience it's not going to give you a detailed explanation of what's going on.

Pure Dysfunction is passed around in much the same way as The Eye of Argon - photocopies of photocopies, mostly person-to-person. A number of copies were lost in 2020/21 because of the 'rona, but odds are about 100% that your ops person has a copy. Just don't bother them during the con.

[ataraxianascendant]

[sadmages]

I miss this guy so much it's unreal

[r0semultiverse]

FINN HAS A KID?!

4?!

Jake?! 👀

5?!

Finn's kid on the right looks a lot like the more human version of Huntress Wizard shown in the series trailer. 👀

[mugiwara--ya]

got a little too silly 🤪

don't repost // support me on ko-fi ♡

[socially-anxious-wizard]

When your daughter doesn't like your situationship with your Ex rival/Non-legally married and divorced Husband.

[fujimousee]

testing out procreate.....

[ariadne-mouse]

"And you are sure these are edible?" "Ja. Well, sort of." "What does 'sort of' mean, Caleb Widogast?"

Here is Shadowgast in the style of Scavengers Reign!

Yes, this is a transparent and blatant attempt to pspspsps my fellow fans of Critical Role into watching this series. The first season is airing now on Netflix as of May 31st. They picked it up after Max did not renew it for a second season, and will decide based on the reception now whether to continue - so I am hoping that lots of people discover the show and love it! The animation studio is Titmouse, who also produces The Legend of Vox Machina.

It's like a Miyazaki-esque Annihilation. Cosmic horror and cosmic wonder in equal and necessary parts. If you like the funky biology parts of Candela Obscura, give this a shot. There is horror. There is humanity. There is hope and connection. There are creatures of all shapes and sizes, including a wonderful amount of tiny idiots, which I have made many compilation posts about. It's a setting where you can envision David Attenborough peacefully narrating a nature documentary about it, but be horrified the same time. Just an absolutely incredible show.

[rabbitprincessthief]

gog i still can't get over minish cap vaati's Everything. He is So Fucking Stupid (affectionate)

Like. This guy's establishing character moment is, in order:

he's introduced as having won an entire tournament to get to touch a magic chest and get a cool sword, which was the prize for said tournament

turns around and does a goddamn evil soliloquy TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE GUARDS who were about to hand him his macguffin on a platter

(like this man fucks up his own horribly planned daylight heist because he cannot keep a lid on the dramatics for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES, IN PUBLIC)

(THE BAR WAS ON THE FLOOR VAATI, FUCKING GANONDORF PLAYS THE PIPE ORGAN FOR HIS OWN BOSS INTRO AND HE STILL KNOWS BETTER THAN THIS SHIT)

proceeds to fight the guards (it is, admittedly, a curbstomp for him, but it still clearly wasn't his plan, because otherwise why bother with the tournament)

gloats evilly

opens chest, unleashing a whole bunch of monsters

exposits out loud about Zelda's powers like a nerd while she is actively charging up her magic powers to kick his ass

RECOGNIZES and IDENTIFIES said magic as the special power carried by the female royal line

completely fails to recognize it as the light force he is currently trying to get his hands on (he spends like 99% of the game not figuring this out.)

petrifies her

(i have no idea if link could have deflected this spell if he had managed to get the right angle with his shield but i like to think somewhere there is a very short and very funny alternate timeline where it happens)

(more importantly: no part of vaati's original presumed plan would have involved doing this. he 100% created this situation for himself by being an dramatic idiot and picking a fight for no good reason.)

looks in the chest

there's no light force

considering his stated goals he might be as confused as you are about the monsters tbh

uhhh

evil laugh

teleports the fuck out

He then proceeds to spend the rest of the game trying to figure out where the light force is and ends up having to wait for Ezlo and Link to figure it out first because he was, as far as I can tell, GENUINELY stuck on this part. He fucking kidnaps and impersonates the King, not for access to Zelda, but to… send guards to go look for the Light Force, presumably because he was either running out of ideas or genuinely thought that would work.

None of the guards even had any idea what he was talking about. He's not even good at impersonating the King. He's already sent like twenty people to the dungeon by the time you get there and it hasn't even been a week. Somehow the game spins this as a cunning plan and clever manipulation or something.

(Meanwhile the guards are just. Poking around in random bushes and shit hoping to find the light force. One of them asks you what you think it might look like.)

Zelda is literally right next to the throne and Vaati does not figure it out until you find an actual honest-to-goodness LORE TABLET spelling out that the Light Force is Stored in the Zelda, at which point he's like "ahahaha you've done my work for me this was definitely my plan all along" and takes over the castle and throws a bunch of monsters at you to stall for time while he figures out how to extract the force from her. Somehow he still doesn't think to actually lock the fucking door.

[fiasco95]

Regulus would James would

see this & send see this & send

it to James: it to Regulus:

“Yeah.” “Look love! It’s

literally you!!!”

[galedekarios]

🔮✨

[lunar-eclipse-bunnies]

so we need to boycott opla season 2.

i, like many others was extremely happy to see this image get circulated a few days ago:

however, according to twolettermo on TikTok, the letter one hundred and fifty fucking hollywood bozos signed in support of bisan's emmy nomination getting rescinded (absolutely disgusting) INCLUDED Marty Adelstein, the CEO & founder of tomorrow studios (the studio making one piece) HE IS ALSO AN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER FOR OPLA.

the video in question (if someone could save it and reblog with the video embedded i would appreciate it):

i may be new to the fandom, but i KNOW that one piece is about liberation and this isn't fucking it. so, as we approach the one year mark since isnotreal started its latest genocide against palestinians, please don't watch OPLA season 2. spend your time more appropriately.

and i suppose giving Adelstein shit for his moronic, disgusting decision via twitter wouldn't hurt.

[courtesanofdeath]

Finral

[anxious-scrambles]

So how about them bibberbang?

Feat @somethingwickedarts’ OC Anthony.

Delightful c0mmission from Jollysaw

[r0semultiverse]

well, this all looks rather familiar...

[umdbooklab]

made by a student, Fall 2023