thesoftestbloom

[thesoftestbloom]

my oc on the unicorn, sketch

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Hummingbird Mouse Gryphon

[thesoftestbloom]

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

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people want more nsfw of my ocs so i am putting them all in one setting so they can all. do gal pal stuff together >:) i love designing worlds and outfits for my babes

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i'm sorry i don't know what came inside me. came into me. came over me. sorry.

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There was a lot of stuff I was supposed to do today, but instead I've made this:

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Debunking Sky News Australia's reports of "migrant takeover" of Europe

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Japanese mother of pearl fantail dove, 1880

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One thing I think comic books are missing is the collection of vaguely weird student and professional artists that would be sending polite but occasionally unhinged requests to every super-powered human known to the public.

"Hey, Superman, I wrote seven secrets on this, can you quick compress it between these two bits of metal so it's hidden forever?"

"Hey Spider-Man, would you be down to just like, web the hell out of the inside of this cardboard box? I've been gathering your stuff from crime scenes but it'd be awesome to have some clean samples." "Hey Batman, can you... you know what, never mind. Hey Robin could you stick this to the highest point in Gotham? I swear it's biodegradable."

"Hey Wonder Woman, I know the Greeks don't *technically* do holy water but can you do some kind of blessing on this bottle? It's for a project." "Hey Flash, can you vibrate for me in the studio so I can cut the sounds into a track?"

"Hey, Green Lantern, you don't happen to know the Pantone shade of your ring, do you?" I am sure someone's going to point me at some kind of existing example but I really feel like this should literally be happening constantly.

[thesoftestbloom]

OTAKON 2025 CATALOG

You can find me at D306 with @housegoblin ₊˚⊹♡

I'll have to be honest with you guys, I've been having a super rough couple of weeks dealing with a sudden family emergency whilst trying to get ready for multiple back-to-back conventions </3 On top of everything, my own personal health has been less than stellar in the last month.

However, I am very excited to come back and see everyone again!! 🤍 Otakon is definitely one of my favorite cons because I get to see so many of my wonderful friends all at one event :-)

If you're attending, please stop by and say hello~

[thesoftestbloom]

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It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this:

[thesoftestbloom]

I think if I could be the kind stranger in someone’s memory, that’d be enough.

[thesoftestbloom]

This whole thing about scanning your face to prove tour age is making me remember, in 2018 while out in paris we got our wallet stolen during a particularly busy night at a lesbian bar. It was very late and with no money to buy metro tickets we were effectively stranded, but some people helped us and we ended up staying the night at a really sweet older man's place. His face was deeply scarred and he was missing an eye. We chatted on our way and he told me about his life, probably to help calm me down. He explained he had been stuck in a house fire 20 years ago and had had multiple rounds of facial reconstruction and a skin graft, but there's only so much surgery can do so he just learned to live with it. I remember he said he liked the queer bars because they're the only place people don't really stare at him.

At some point I took out my phone, and at the time I was using face unlock. This prompted him to tell me all the ways this technology doesn't work on him. How his phone selfie camera doesn't focus right because it's not detecting a face. How he had to update his ID the old fashioned way, because the website kept rejecting his photos. And how it was becoming more and more common, and how it was making his life way harder.

This was 7 years ago, and now whenever I see this sort of technology I think of how that guy can't use it. And how house fires are pretty common, and how anything from being born this way to a skin condition to heavy tattooing can probably cause the same issue. Can these people get age verified ? Will they just lose access to all social media, which are increasingly necessary in society, if this becomes the norm ? These are people who are already driven out of public spaces due to how they look, and they're getting pushed out online too all in the interest of companies wanting more money.