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kcrossvine-art · 3 months

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Hi fellow adventurers!! A few weeks ago i caught wind of "Delicious in Dungeon". I'm not really an anime person, but I am a TTRPG, CRPG, and cooking person- . And holy shit. It is so good i convinced my partner to binge read the whole thing. I'm caught up on dungeon meshi, the anime, and just yesterday i also finished dungeon meshi, the manga.

Its rare to come across a serialized story that is so thematically cohesive and knows its characters so well. All of the bonus content like the artbooks and monster tidbits are just the icing on top.

So, inspired by Ryōko Kui's writing and illustration I'm going to attempt to create a recipe for every single Delicious in Dungeon recipe!-

Today that means Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot is on the menu!

(As always you can find the cooking instructions and full ingredient list under the break-)

MY NAMES CROSS NOW LETS COOK LIKE ANIMALS

SO, “what goes in to a Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot?” YOU MIGHT ASKThis is one of the pricier dishes until we get to the kelpies and dragons of the menu-

Rock lobster tail

Porcini mushrooms

Shiitake mushrooms

Snow fungus

Small potatos

Fensi (glass noodles)

Water

OPTIONAL: your choice of dipping sauces

There was a crossover/promotional event in Shibuya which featured various realworld dishes from the series. They had one for Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom, but they used prawns. while those cook better in a hotpot, they also didn't look enough like the scorpion for me, they also used udon noodles for the slime and a seaweed/kale(?) mixture for the algae. If you're looking for substitutes due to price or availability i would start with those ingredients.

AND, “what does a Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot taste like?” YOU MIGHT ASKI hope Senshi would forgive me for technically cooking the lobster outside the pot, once he tastes it.

Okay im always partial to veggies but wowowowowowowoowowowow the snow fungus and the mushrooms tasted soooooooooooo good in the lobster stock

A nice delicate layering of different flavors

Try to get a bite with the lobster meat and shiitake together, dip in butter then chili- trust me

Its up to you what texture you prefer if you want to put the noodles in at the end or put them in halfway through the meal. Either way dont go for eating those first as theyre very filling

I think this would pair well with a citrus drink, something light and clarifying

This would also pair well with being extremely high and hungry (if you feel safe cooking while inebriated lol) very calorically dense

For the trial run I did one lobster tail in the pot with everything else, and one lobster tail off to the side to be picked apart. The former is more in spirit with a hotpot, but it got rubbery as the meal went on and lost its nice taste. The latter may be a bit more work but all you have to do still is boil it and set it aside. I found it held up much better. It was also easier to get inside the shell.

. If you have hardshell maine lobster available, i think it would be superior to rock lobster (keep in mind crustaceans will get rubbery if cooked too long in the pot) . Green onions and/or lotus root would make excellent additions

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From getting the ingredients out to sitting down and eating, id say it took maybe 30 minutes max? It'd vary on how fast you can prep vegetables and get the various implements heated.

Hotpots are not something i do very often as i'm usually just feeding myself. I think thats why a hotpot makes perfect sense to start the series off. If you want to set the tone of "take care of yourself, eat food with others, and use what you have" (generally speaking) there is nothing more simplistic, flexible, and defeats-the-purpose-if-you-eat-it-alone than a hotpot. Gather around and let your friends bring ingredients to the pot if you want to fill your heart up extra full <3

I'm doing something different here because unlike previous recipes where i used a bunch of different sources and made my own recipe out of hodge-podging it, or just used another persons recipe entirely if they did it really well, i made this more whole-cloth based off of what i had available, what I could discover through research, and my existing knowledge. Instead of the recipe being 50/50 original, this one is more 20/80. So. I'll pass the final verdict off to you guys :D

What would you rate this recipe out of 10? (with 1 being food that makes one physically sick and 10 being food that gives one a lust for life again.) Did you love it, did you hate it? What're your thoughts on what I could do different, and what would you have done instead?

🐁 ORIGINAL RESIPPY TEXT BELOW 🐁

Ingredients:

2 Rock lobster tails

3 Porcini mushrooms

2 Shiitake mushrooms

Snow fungus (a good handful, should rehydrate in the hotpot)

2 Small waxy potatos

Fensi (glass noodles)

Water/lobster stock

Method:

Lightly rinse all of your vegetables beforehand and let them dry.

Vertically slice the porcini mushrooms. Cut off and dice the stems of the shiitake mushrooms. You can slice the tops if youd like.

Peel and cube the potatoes, roughly an inch each.

For the lobster tails; Boil a pot of salted water. Keep the shell on. Weigh the largest tail and add 1 minute of cooking time for every ounce of weight.

When done, strain the lobster from the water. Pour the water into your hotpot as the base. Serve the lobster on the side so people can pick the meat out to dip into the hotpot.

Bring the hotpot to a simmer. Add the potato cubes, snow fungus, mushrooms, and noodles.

OPTIONAL: this wasnt in the show, but its fun having sauces on the side :) i had oyster sauce, dry seasoned chili dip, melted butter, and soy sauce available

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #cooking #digital art

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anim-ttrpgs · 2 months

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Why I Dislike PbtA Games, and How Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is Their Opposite

@tender-curiosities

It is no secret that I hate PbtA games.

Though due to a recent misunderstanding regarding another post, I’m going to preface this post by saying that this is going to be a very opinionated post and

I do not seriously think that PbtA games are inherently bad, though I may sometimes joke about this.

While I do often question the taste of people who make and play PbtA hacks, I do not think poorly of their moral character.

While I am going to call for PbtA to be used less as a base for games in the future, I’m not saying that the whole system and all games based on it should be destructified. It’s good for what it’s good for, but unless you’re doing that, I really think you should use something else.

Now that that is out of the way, here’s what I have to say about it.

My first experiences with PbtA games were pretty rough. Monster of the Week was not the first, but it was one of the first ‘indie’ TTRPGs I played after having previously played mostly only D&D3.5e and 5e. I really appreciated that the use of 2D6 over a D20 meant that the dice results would be more predictable, and I really liked the various “classes” I was seeing. (At this time, I didn’t really understand that they weren’t really “classes” at all, though I think I can be forgiven for this because many people, even people who like PbtA games, still talk like “classes” and “playbooks” are interchangeable.)

I was very enthusiastic to play, until it came time to start actually “making” a character, and found that I couldn’t “make” a character. I wanted to make a nuanced, three-dimensional PC who was simultaneously stereotype-affirming and stereotype-defying, with a unique backstory and dynamic with the other characters—but when I went to actually fill out the character sheet for basically any “class”, I found that most of the backstory and most of the personality for my character was being set for me by the playbook. It felt like the only thing about the character I really had a say in was their name, and that two PCs of the same playbook would actually turn out to be almost identical characters. At the time, I thought this was very restrictive and very bad design.

Later, now that I understand the design intent behind it, I still think of it as very restrictive, but I think of it as very bad design for me, not inherently bad.

When I play a TTRPG, I want more freedom in who my PC is. That doesn’t mean I want less rules, in fact having more rules can often increase freedom, but that’s a different post. I want to create original, unique characters, that I won’t see anywhere else. If it’s a class-based system, I want that class to barely touch the details of my character’s backstory or personality, so that I can come up with something original and engaging for why and how this “Fighter” fights. This means that two level-1 Fighters, despite having almost the same mechanical abilities, will potentially be very different people.

PbtA games don’t let you do that. In a lot of PbtA games, you’re not playing your own original character, you’re playing someone else’s character, that every other player that has picked up the same playbook before you has played. It’s more like “character select” than “character creation.” I think I could liken it to playing Mass Effect or The Witcher. Every player may pick a few different dialogue choices in those games that change the story, but we’re still all playing Shepherd or Geralt. No one is going to experience a new never-before-seen story in Mass Effect or The Witcher, which is very much a factor of them being video games and not TTRPGs, and therefore limited to the amount of code, writing, and voice-acting that can go into them.

This anonymous asker who sent a message to @thydungeongal seems to feel pretty similarly to me about PbtA games, and @thydungeongal's response is a very good response about how people find this appealing.

I have more respect for PbtA now than I did, but I still don't like it because to me it seems to play so much against what I consider to be the strengths of TTRPGs as a medium, much like how video games like The Last of Us and David Cage games play against the strengths of the medium of video games, and I will never like it. But other people clearly do, so to each their own.

Then another reason I don’t like it is because I think it’s oversaturating the TTRPG space. I’ve referred to PbtA before as “indie D&D5e”, and i do think that’s a reasonable comparison, because in much the same way that you always hear “D&D5e is a system that can do everything”, I think a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the PbtA system is a system that can do anything. It’s kinda the système du jour for indie TTRPGs right now, and many iterations of it make it clear that many designers do not consider how PbtA differs from more traditional TTRPGs, and how it is specialized for different types of TTRPG gameplay. Just like how I feel PbtA isn’t playing to certain important strengths of TTRPGs, I think that many—maybe even most—PbtA hacks don’t play to the strengths of PbtA. But this isn’t really PbtA’s fault, that comes down to any individual indie TTRPG developer on a case-by-case basis. And the cure for that is something I’m always saying: If you are going to be a writer, you have got to read lots of books. If you are going to be a director, you have got to watch lots of movies. If you are going to be a video game developer, you have got to play lots of video games. And if you are going to be a TTRPG designer, you have got to read and play lots of TTRPGs. That and you have to understand that TTRPGs are specialized. Even "agnostic" systems like PbtA are somewhat specialized, and therefore might really not be a great fit for the game you’re trying to make.

That and, to get more subjective again, there’s like an ocean of them, and I don’t even like the ones that are actually good.

Now that I’ve talked about how I don’t like PbtA games, I’m gonna talk about a game I do like: Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Obviously, I like it because I’m the lead writer for it, but I would also like it even if I wasn’t the lead writer for it, because it’s just my kinda game. Eureka is the opposite of a PbtA game. I wrote it to play to what I feel are the strengths of the TTRPG medium.

Eureka’s character creation uses personality traits as a mechanical element of the character, but it does so in a deliberately freeform way. You build your character’s personality out of a list of traits, so who your character is is very much linked to what your character can do, but we aren’t just handing you a pre-made character.

Eureka is designed to incentivize organic decision-making by the PCs, most often by the mechanics of the game mirroring the world they live in. Every mechanic aims to create situations wherein “what will the PC do next?” is a question whose answer can be predicted - it doesn’t need to be ordained by a playbook.

One of my favorite examples of this is, rather than a “Fear Check” forcing the PC to run away if they fail, or “Run Away from Danger” being a “Move” on their character sheet, Eureka opts for the Composure mechanic. The really short version is that one of the main things that lowers a PC’s Composure is encountering scary stuff, and the lower a PC’s Composure, the more likely they are to fail skill checks, and the more likely they are to fail skill checks, well, the less brave they and their player probably feel about them standing up to this scary monster. So if the PC has low Composure, they are more likely to choose to run away. The lower their Composure, the better idea that will seem.

This system really really shines when it comes to monster PCs in Eureka. Most monsters benefit a lot more from having high Composure, but have fewer ways to restore Composure than mundane PCs. Their main way to restore their Composure is by eating people. The rulebook never says “your monster PC has to eat people”, but more likely than not, they’re going to be organically steered towards that by the game and world itself. Sure, they could decide to be “one of the good ones”, and just never eat people, just like you reading this could decide to stop eating food. You technically could, but when your body starts to fail, how long would you? (This is a big part of the themes of Eureka and what it has to say about crime, disability, mental illness, and evil. People don’t just arbitrarily do bad things, it is often their circumstances that leads them down that path until they see little choice for themselves in that matter, and “harmful” people are still just as deserving of life as people who “aren’t harmful”, but that really deserves its own post.)

It has been said that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually arrives at much the same end as the PbtA game Monsterhearts, and I actually don’t disagree, but it gets there from an entirely different starting point and direction. The monster PCs in Eureka are very likely to eat people and cause drama, but it won’t be because they have “Eat People and Cause Drama” as a “Move” on their character sheet.

Monsters in Eureka have a lot of abilities, which they can use to solve (and create) problems as the emergent story emerges organically.

(Oh and Eureka is about adult investigators investigating mysteries, and sometimes those investigators are monsters, not about monster kids in high school, to be clear. The same “end” that Eureka and Monsterhearts reach is that of the monsters being prone to cause problems and drama due to the fact that they are monsters, though this isn’t the sole point of Eureka, just one element of it.)

You can pick up the free shareware version of this game from the download link on our website, or the full version for $5 from our Patreon.

And don’t forget, Eureka is fundraising on Kickstarter starting on April 10th, 2024! We need your support there most of all, to make sure we hit our goals and can afford to make the best version of Eureka we can make!

Interested in branching out but can’t get your group to play anything but D&D5e? Join us at the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, where we nominate, vote on, and play indie TTRPGs, all organized by our team with no strict schedule requirement! Here's the invite link! See you there!

We also have merchandise.

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ladytabletop · 7 months

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Lady Tabletop's Primer for Getting into Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design Philosophy

Sam Dunnewold over at the Dice Exploder podcast has posed a fun question to his discord server: where would you tell people to start if they wanted to know more about TTRPGs and design?

First and foremost, I'd tell people to start with @jdragsky's article about Systems of Relation.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can now understand that the games we played on the playground were identical in nature to the tabletop RPGs I would grow up to play and help design.

Next, check out Thomas Manuel's analysis of the Axes of Game Design over on the Indie RPG Newsletter.

So the basic exercise is trying to figure out the standard axes or spectrums on which every game can fit. The idea is for these axes to be as descriptive and objective as possible.

Thirdly (and lastly for the purposes of this blog - it's entry-level, not comprehensive), check out this reddit thread about lonely fun.

The Lonely Fun is all of the stuff you do as a part of your hobby away from the table, in any way you might engage. For D&D 5e players, this is usually building complicated and elaborate characters on the page, pouring over the books for new races and subclasses, figuring out fun new combinations, and carefully crafting characters.

Read those? Now check out BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home by @temporalhiccup

Will we be able to outrun our Masters and those who hunt us down? Can we use our magic to bring about the rebirth of the city and all Elementals? ill this be our RECKONING or our HOMECOMING? That’s what we play to find out.

Why I make these particular recommendations below the cut.

All of these recommendations are hopefully all entry-level. I tried to stay away from any essays, blogs, or articles that reference game movements you may not have heard of or that require tons of reading before you can even read my recommendations. Some do have links to other stuff, and if you're enjoying the writing, definitely go down those rabbit holes! These are a tiny, tiny portion of my "TTRPG Homework" folder where I save essays, podcasts, etc that have helped me in my own game design journey. I'm always happy to share more, just ask!

The essay on Systems of Relation put into words something I had been thinking about the more I got into indie games/design: I've been playing my whole life, and ttrpgs are just another piece of that. I think it's crucial to break out of the framework of people trying to define play and games into neat little categories. Will I ever write a game as good as the ones I played in the backyard with my siblings? Probably not, but I'd like to find out.

Now that I've told you to stop trying to categorize games, we have an article about trying to categorize games. But I do like Thomas's assessment and examples of using game design axes. I think as designers it's important to figure out the things the game is trying to do and communicate, so that we can make sure it does those things well.

Lastly, I know 5e gets a bad rap (and it's gotten it from me, too!). But the concept of lonely fun has stuck in my craw since I first saw this thread. It's why some people prefer to GM (and therefore why GM-less games might not work for some people). Not all games are going to have lonely fun, but the ones that do are still going to appeal to people! This thread was key for me in terms of considering that no game is for everyone, and it shouldn't try to be, and also helped contextualize the enjoyment I get from the occasional high-prep game.

Balikbayan as a recommendation was a no-brainer for me. I'm not going to say it's the most elegant or tight of Rae's work, but it's the one with the most heart for me. The story this game wants you to tell is so clear, and as an introduction to "Belonging Outside Belonging" as a system/concept/design philosophy. This game really sings in its character concepts and emotional play.

If you've read this far, congratulations! I've been enjoying the DE podcast (even when I don't agree with some of the takes) and the discord has been a cool (if at times intimidating) place to hang out. I've had a hell of a game design journey this year and I'm so excited to keep learning, and to see what media other folks participating in this blog carnival recommend!

To sign off: my best advice to designers, especially those starting out can be boiled down to three things:

When in doubt, simplify or make it silly

The two cakes theory is your best friend - game design is not a competition

Not everything has to be finished. Not every part of the creative process is fun. Find the balance between these two truths (you're going to have to do that every day).

Best,

#the lady rambles

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utilitycaster · 3 months

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Daggerheart Character Build thoughts!

I am actually out at work and haven't checked the version that's since come out, but I did participate in the character build beta, and the NDA is officially lifted, so here's my thoughts from that! It's definitely limited since I just made a L1 character and didn't go through gameplay, though I surmise about some aspects of gameplay.

Overall, it clearly seems to be made by people who love a lot of things about D&D 5e but wanted both more flexibility and more simplicity, which is difficult. I think they succeed.

To that end, it takes away some of the crunchier aspects (precise positioning, exact amounts of gold) and I think for some people that will be a problem, and that's valid, but ultimately this game wants to both allow for interesting mechanics in and out of combat while also not being terribly math/map/resource management heavy. It is a hard line to walk; most systems either go hard crunch or go entirely gooey.

The dice mechanic (2d12, Hope and Fear system) is fantastic; look it up but I think it handles mixed successes more gracefully and interestingly than a lot of games.

The playtest was not super clear on armor and evasion choices (or indeed what evasion means; it seems to be sort of initiative but sort of dex save, or maybe more like the Pathfinder/old school D&D varying ACs by scenario?). It was much, MUCH clearer than D&D on weapon choices (part of why I play casters? Weapon rules in D&D are annoying and poorly explained and many people rightfully ignore them) so I'm hoping this becomes clear when there's a full guide rather than just the character creation info.

The character creation questions by class were fantastic and in general, and this is a theme, this feels like it guides people towards collaboration. FWIW I feel like D&D has that information, but the way it's presented is very much as flavor text rather than a thing you should be doing. Daggerheart makes this a much more core part of creation. The Experience mechanic is particularly clear: you better be working with your GM and really thinking about background, rather than slapping it on as a mechanic.

The other side of character creation questions is that it really encourages engagement with the class, which is something I've talked about. I think either subversion for the sake of subversion, or picking a class for the mechanics and aesthetic but not the fundamental concept, will be much harder to justify in Daggerheart, and I think that's a good thing because when people do that, their characters tend to be weaker.

The downtime is designed for you to write hurt/comfort fanfic about and this is a compliment. There are a number of mechanics that reward RP, particularly one of the healing mechanics under the Splendor track. I feel like a weakness of D&D is that when you try to reward RP it's really nebulous because there's not actually a ton of space to put that - you can give inspiration, but, for example, the empathy domain Matt homebrewed actually feels kind of off because it's based on such fuzzy concepts amid mechanics that are usually more rigid. Daggerheart comes off as much cleaner yet still RP-focused, and I'm excited to see it in action.

A judgement of Candela and I suppose Daggerheart might be that it's designed for actual play. I've mentioned before that I know people who are super into the crunch and combat and numbers of TTRPGs and are less story-oriented, and again, that's valid, but actual play is just storytelling using a ttrpg and so yes, a game that encourages RP while also having mechanics to support that and influence it is an extremely good goal. I am not an actual player, but I do like D&D games with a good plot and not just Go Kill Monsters, and I want to play this. (I also have some real salty thoughts about how if you modify an existing game for AP purposes that's staggering genius apparently, but if you make your own game how dare you but that's another post).

And now, the classes/subclasses. I am going to sort of use D&D language to describe them because that's a point of reference most people reading this will understand, but they are not one-to-one. A couple notes: everyone can use weapons and armor. HP is not totally clear to me but it seems to be threshold based - everyone has the same HP to start but people have different thresholds and armor, so the tank classes have the same amount of HP but are much harder to actually do damage to.

All classes are built on a combination of a subclass and two domains. There are 9 classes and 9 domains. This technically means that if you wanted to fuck around and homebrew you could make up to 36 classes (27 additional) by just grabbing two domains that weren't otherwise combined, which is fun to consider for the potential. Anyway I cover the classes and briefly describe domains within them. You can take any domain card within your domain, regardless of subclass.

There are six stats. Presence, Instinct, Knowledge, and Strength map roughly to Charisma, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Strength. Dex is split into Agility and Finesse; Agility covers gross motor skills (jumping, most ranged weapons, "maneuvering") and Finesse finer ones (lockpicking and tinkering, though also it does cover hiding). The really big wins are first, no CON score, so you don't need to sink stat points into something that grants no skills but keeps you alive. The second one is that the "hybrid" classes spellcast from their physical stat. This is fucking fantastic. The thing about ranger or paladin or the spellcasting subclasses of rogue and fighter in D&D is that if you don't roll pretty well you're locked into the core stats and CON and nothing else. (This also doesn't have rolling for stats: you assign +2 to one stat, presumably your main, and then distribute two +1s, two 0s, and one -1.)

Your HP, Evasion, and Thresholds are set by class, and there's a core ability; the rest is all from the cards you take for subclass and domain.

Leveling up is very much based on taking more domain cards (abilities) but has a certain degree of flexibility. It's by chunks: in leveling up anywhere levels 2-4, you can, for example, increase your proficiency by +1 once, so if you wanted to do that at level 2 but your fellow player wanted to wait until level 4 and take something else at level 2 instead, they could. It allows for more min-maxing, but also everyone has the same level up rules and differs only in the abilities on the cards, which is very cool.

Bard: Grace (enchantment spells) and Codex (learned spellcaster stuff; the spells available are definitely arcane in vibes) based, Presence is your main stat. The two subclasses map roughly to lore-style stuff and eloquence. Core class ability is sort of like inspiration but not entirely. It's a bard; I like bards a lot, and this is very similar vibes-wise to your D&D bards. If you like D&D bards you will like this.

Druid: Sage (nature spells) and Arcana (raw magical power spellcaster stuff), Instinct is your spellcasting/main stat. The two subclasses are elemental but frankly cooler than circle of the moon, and a more healing/tranquility of nature focused one. I really think Marisha probably gave feedback on this one, because the elemental version is really strong. You do get beastform; it is quite similar to a D&D druid under a different system, as the bard, but the beastform options are, frankly, better and easier to understand.

Guardian: Valor (melee tank/damager) and Blade (damage). Strength based for the most part (Valor mechanics assume strength) though you could go for like, +2 Agility +1 Strength to start. This is barbarian but like. 20 times better. It is, fundamentally, a tank class, and it is very good at it, with one even more tank-focused subclass and one that is more about retaliatory damage. You do have a damage-halving ability once per day, but really guardian's questions are incredible. I think Travis and Ashley likely gave feedback. Also rage doesn't render you incapable of concentration as that doesn't seem to be a thing, so multiclassing seems way more possible (you are, I think, only allowed to do one multiclass, and not until you reach level 5 minimum, which I am in favor of). Yes, you can be a Bardian.

Ranger: This is what I built! It is based on Sage and Bone (movement around the field/dodging stuff) and it is Agility-based, including for spellcasting, which is a MASSIVE help (as is, again, the fact that CON isn't a thing.) The subclasses are basically being really good at navigation, or animal companion. Most importantly to me you can be a ranger with a longsword and you are not penalized; Bone works with either ranged weapons or melee.

Rogue: Midnight (stealth/disguise/assassination spells and skills) and Grace-based. Yes, rogue is by default a spellcaster, which does help a LOT with the vibes for me. One subclass is basically about having lots of connections (as a spy or criminal might) and the other is about magical slinking about. Hiding/sneak attack are also streamlined. I will admit I'm still more interested in…almost everything else, but I think it evened out a lot of rogue weaknesses.

Seraph: Splendor (healing/divine magic) and Valor. This is your Paladin equivalent. It is strength-based for casting, again making hybrid classes way less stressful. Questions for this area also incredible; you do have something not unlike a lay on hands pool as well. Your subclasses are being able to fly and do extra damage; or being able to make your melee weapon do ranged attacks and also some extra healing stuff, the latter of which is my favorite. Yasha vibes from this, honestly. Single downside is this is the only class where they recommend you dump Knowledge. I will not, and I never will. Now that I don't have to make sure CON is high? I am for REAL never giving myself less than a +1 Knowledge in this game.

Sorcerer: Arcana (raw nature of magic/elemental vibes) and Midnight based. Yes, sorcerers and rogues now share a vibe, for your convenient….less enthused feelings. Instinct-based, which intrigues me, and the core features are in fact really good. The two subclasses are either one that focuses on metamagic abilities, or one that is elemental based. I would play this for a long-running game, though it's not my favorite, and I can't say that for D&D sorcerer (except divine soul).

Warrior: Blade and Bone, and the recommended build is Agility but you could do a strength build. Fighter! One subclass is about doing damage and one is about the hope/fear mechanics core to the game that I have NOT talked much about. I will admit, the hybrid martials and Guardian are more interesting to me but you do have good battle knowledge.

Wizard: Codex and Splendor. Wizards can heal in this system; farewell, I will be doing nothing else (jk). Knowledge-based, and you can either go hardcore expertise in knowledge, or be a battle wizard.

Other scattered thoughts: healing is not as big a deal here; there is no pure cleric class! There is also no monk, warlock, or artificer. There is not a way to do monk as a weaponless class really though you might be able to flavor the glowing rings as a monk weapon and play a warrior. Wizard, meanwhile, with the right experiences and high finesse, would allow for some artificer flavor. Cleric and Warlock are the two tough ones and I will admit those are tricky; I feel like you'd have to multiclass (which you cannot do until level 5) between perhaps seraph and a caster class and you're still going to come off very paladin.

#critical role #daggerheart #ttrpg mechanics #long post

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fuckitwebhaal · 9 months

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the dark urge

please do not come for me these are just my takes and opinions on the durge route, as someone who has run it through a few times and is pretty familiar with the lore in regards to the previous games. also massive spoilers below. like if you do not want any dark urge spoilers stop reading now.

The Dark Urge (henceforth referred to as DU), whether approached narratively as resisting or as succumbing, is more of a solidly fleshed out origin for a customizable player character compared to Tav. The reason for this is because the DU follows the precedent set by the previous Baldur's Gate games where the main player character is a Bhaalspawn. (If I recall correctly, that was also the intention for BG3, but it was scrapped and the origins split to allow for a fully customizable option).

I'm not going to get into the history of the Bhaalspawn, save to say this much: The protagonist of BG1 & 2, Gorion's Ward, is referenced on rare occasion throughout a DU playthrough and is implied to be dead. (Though they are never named as Abdel Adrian from the TTRPG canon, it is implied that it seems to be following a blend of canon from BG2 and the TTRPG canon). Bhaal, who had split his divine essence into his many children, relied on their deaths and a ritual so that he could return--in a physical sense--to the planes and reclaim his godhood as the Lord of Murder.

You, BG3 DU protag, are crafted purely from Bhaal's divine essence. This was confusing to me at first, because I had believed Bhaal incapable of having any more mortal children (due to not having a physical presence), but it is implied that Bhaal's spiritual and divine essence is strong enough to form you from himself, he is merely lacking the ritual that would return him to physicality. Which is where you come in. And, Orin, I guess.

Because you were crafted from Bhaal, it is implied that any cultural or genetic claim (such as half-elf, dragonborn, or whatever race you choose) is but Bhaal's mimicry of what those stereotypes should be. You're a killer, a Bhaalyn through and through, and you'll be the one to slay the world and slit your own throat on the carcasses left behind to bring about Bhaal's return. The only thing is, you got cocky. Confident. Comfortable. Careless. You got comfortable in your alliance with Gortash and Ketheric. Orin was jealous and wanted your blessing--your place as Bhaal's chosen--, so she struck you down, muddled your mind, and infected you with a mindflayer parasite. That's why you have no memory, and why you ended up on that ship.

So, here you are. You have no memories, but you have a rage and a disgrace and a vengeance you can't quite place. You've got an urge telling you to kill, kill, kill.

Pause. In previous games, the Bhaalspawn protagonist didn't have a "dark urge" that caused you to want to commit violence or murders outside of your control. (Not including Siege of Dragonspear (2016), which does include one uncontrollable murder. This DLC was released as a bridge between BG1 & 2 and came out after the pitches for BG3 had begun). It's implied that this is because of your pure divine creation--think Jesus. Think godspawn. God and mortal. That's what you are, murder incarnate.

The main crux of the DU run, then, becomes this: what do you want to do with this? There are a few paths laid out before you, but the narrative is pretty clear: you are a killer, and you'll always be a killer. This is where I first ran into my concerns with the DU; I was afraid it was going to be an edgelord-y, murderhobo-y playthrough that sacrificed story and companion mechanics for the sake of a bloody kill and edgy narration. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't the case, because the story unfurls really well no matter which way you go.

A friend of mine played the DU run totally evil; every bad option, every urge indulged, so I asked them what they thought of it. They said it "It definitely involved a lot more violence and death than [their Tav] run, but it's not like [they] murdered everyone [they] came across", and "It did feel a lot like someone very confused with themselves becoming very drunk with the power that comes with the urge".

I played my two DU playthroughs in two parallel ways. The first being Kyr; a DU who wanted to resist his urges and talked a good talk, had a good heart, but at every major moment, he failed to resist and ultimately succumbed back to Bhaal's embrace and became his Chosen.

My other playthrough is Nyris; a cynical, mistrustful bastard, he started out a little rocky, but growing with his companions caused him to reject the evil in his blood despite his other moral shortcomings; in the critical moments, he rejected Bhaal's influence and overcame.

How the DU presents to me, then, is this: nature v nurture. Which will win, which will overcome? By playing Kyr, it felt as though the nature was his driving force. It didn't matter how removed he was or how hard he tried to convince others that he could do better--how hard he could try to convince himself he could do better--he was already doomed by the narrative. Bhaal's manipulations drove him back home, and he didn't even realize that he'd been sucked back into the cult until it was far too late.

But, then, what about Nyris? To him, it felt like nurture. If you remove the cult from him, the indoctrination, what was left? A man struggling to make his own identity, but among those who reaffirmed it every chance that they could. He relied on his own strength and that of those around him to overcome, even if he was unsure, afraid, doubted. It feels like the nurture, or lack thereof, of Bhaal and the Bhaalist cult meant that he was free to grow and learn away from it.

It's something I find further supported in conversations with Jaheira and Minsc, who both talk about "their Bhaalspawn companion", otherwise known as Gorion's Ward from the first two games.

[ID: Minsc: "If Minsc did not inherit the flaming red hair of his mother, or the bushy red beard of his father, why would the spawn of Bhaal inherit his wickedness?"

Kyrran: "We should talk about nature versus nurture some day."

Minsc: "It is simple. As with all battles, the winner will be the one that carries the bigger sword."]

So, in my opinion, the personal arc of the DU and one that the player must engage with is the idea of nature versus nurture, and how your DU will cope with the revelations of their paths in light of the new memories and friendships that they have forged. That's not to say you can't always swing to one extreme; never indulge or always indulge, it's still digging into that nature versus nurture idea.

There is, also, the more overarching theme of BG3 in regards to breaking cycles of abuse, power, and control. If you lean into the idea of nature v nurture, and you realize that there were originally foster families involved in the upbringing of the DU (before said families were murdered, or the DU stolen away by the Bhaalist cult), you have to consider two things:

1.) Bhaal is comparable to both Shar and Vlaakith as gods that indoctrinate their religious followers, and

2.) Bhaal is comparable to Mystra and Cazador as those who take control of a severe power imbalance to inflict their will.

The narrative informs you, if you accept Bhaal's gift as Chosen, exactly the consequences that will fall upon you. It is the same as the consequences that are so heavily explained to you in regards to Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Gale, and Astarion.

[ID: *A gift from your god, your Father. An offering of his affection for you, or confirmation that he owns you.*]

[ID: *For a moment, the brine-pool of your brain clears. To die: to rest, to save the world from yourself. To accept, to become his prophet - in any disobedience, subject to his lash.*]

A lot of people say that the DU run is the "evil" playthrough, and it truly isn't. Just like any of the other decisions you make in this game in regards to your companion quest, it is a question of power and control. Power you give up by rejecting Bhaal is also control that he loses over you. Power you gain in accepting him, to exert over others, is also the control he will take. It's up to you how you will approach the DU, but I think it is shortsighted to say it is the "evil" playthrough if you are not fully engaging with the themes. You can make all of the good options that you can make with Tav--but you are fighting the narrative. The narrative has a plan for you. If you want to resist, you will have to fight for it.

#anyways. i will probably add on more to this. at some point.#fiwb meta #bg3 meta #bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #durge spoilers #the dark urge #baldur's gate 3 spoilers #dark urge spoilers #bg3 dark urge #bg3 dark urge spoilers #spoilers #spoiler tag #meta tag #meta

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seyaryminamoto · 3 months

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Azula's most overlooked characterization element

Why, hello there.

It is I.

And I'm back on my bullshit.

I didn't WANT to be. But a bunch of factors pulled me back in.

For the record: I'm not here to start any fights or light the fuse of arguments that I most likely won't have time or interest in responding to. What I AM here for... is to prove that there's something out there a bunch of people are delighted to sleep on because acknowledging it would render maaaany simplistic interpretations entirely invalid...

That group of people includes the fandom, of course. And the original show's staff. And the liveaction's staff, to a fault. Surely the TTRPG ones too. And absolutely, the comic book writers.

Hell, I'll even include MYSELF in that group, even though I'm making this post right now.

I found it really curious that I very recently saw this element mentioned in a pretty neat blog I follow, @atla-lore-archive, I absolutely advise anyone who hasn't checked out said archive to do it if you wish to understand a lot of the "extra lore" the fandom had access to, back in the old days when the turbonick ATLA site still existed and used to be the only source of deeper knowledge about the fandom besides the occasional interview that most people didn't even know where to track down.

But the funny thing is that the post I'm talking about proved that even Turbonick forgot about the people this post is about :')

And that would beeeeeeee...

*cue drumroll*

Lo and Li!

What makes Lo and Li an important subject to discuss?

Why, a lot of things. Among them, the fact that almost nobody brings them into the core focus of any analysis made about Azula's character. I've personally mentioned them once or twice I believe, mostly as negatives, there's but ONE positive aspect I've ever found of them: them being non-benders MIGHT be a reason why Azula isn't shown as being quite so obsessive with firebending supremacy as Zuko was supposed to be.

But that's very much the sole good thing I can think to say about them and it's completely subjective, as good as a headcanon, because we don't even KNOW if they influenced Azula in that sense!

Why do they seem to get overlooked quite as much? Why... let's start thinking about it, shall we?

Lo and Li are Azula's firebending teachers. As far as anyone can tell, they're also her advisors. These two people should be an essential part of Azula's life... but ironically, we seldom see them with her. Most times, Azula isn't around these two. Whenever she is? It doesn't usually look like she's having a good time.

And that's no surprise, considering her first scene with those two very much puts forward a dynamic of cold distance between Azula and her mentors: Azula is bending LIGHTNING. We have not heard of other lightningbenders until that point, and once the full show wraps up, there's only THREE (Azula, Ozai, Iroh). Out of those three? Only one is a fourteen-year-old girl. It's very easy to assume Azula's lightning is actually a skill she mastered unusually early in life, perhaps relatively recently, hence the practicing... but she's pulling it off. She's succeeding. She's doing something that genuinely catches a first-time viewer off-guard!

And Lo and Li's entire opinion of what she did is: "Almost perfect. One hair out of place."

This tells you the Fire Nation's idea of "imperfection" is... insane. Strict. Imposing. Unyielding. Unforgiving. Azula's reaction isn't to get angry at Lo and Li for saying what they did: it's to get angry at herself and try again.

But... that's not the only instance where we see Azula getting angry around Lo and Li.

The next few times Azula is around them, she doesn't seem to have much of an emotional reaction (one is when they tell her to find other allies, the other when they herald her as a great hero who returned home from Ba Sing Se). In the second of these scenes, Lo and Li are praising Azula as incredible, beautiful, all sorts of grand things...! And Azula smiles. She smiles at the crowd. She's not smiling at the old ladies who are praising her... she's mostly just happy to know her people are welcoming her as a hero indeed! Most the fandom would go "true! what an ungrateful bitch! She should've been happy that Lo and Li complimented her that way!!" Me? I wouldn't say that at all. Not just because I love Azula to pieces? But because the only information we have of Azula's dynamics with these two... doesn't seem compatible with the idea that what Lo and Li are saying here is for AZULA'S benefit.

Anyone who's had a hypocritical parent/caretaker/teacher must have endured awkward, horrible, unpleasant moments where this adult figure treats you like shit in private but in public holds you as this grand example, and a perfect child, and they never seem to stop saying they're soooo proud of you even though you NEVER felt that what they're saying is true. Maybe the first few times, you're naive enough to believe it. By the tenth time of incongruent messages? You start to realize they're talking you up as a way to make themselves look better. They're trying to show they're doing their job at raising you/training you, be it whatever it may. The praises are not FOR you... they're for a third person to hear and think "Oh, this adult's so cool, saying nice things about this kid they're responsible for! Nice!"

... You're starting to get the picture now, I'm sure.

Lo and Li reappear in the Beach. Azula is notably chill, enjoying the ride, talking casually with Ty Lee, telling Zuko to lighten up and to stop taking Ozai's choices personally, right? She seems... content. Relaxed.

Then, everything changed when Lo and Li attacked.

We don't even see why Azula is making this face at first. But she does it AT ONCE when their ship reaches the dock.

Who is there indeed...?

The stars of our post! :') if it isn't our elderly twin ladies... who brought Azula to a very disappoting beach house. And when Azula sees the house in question, she makes THIS face.

Judge however you may... even Ty Lee is weirded out by the beach house, going by that expression. Zuko and Mai aren't impressed either. But Azula? The look on her face isn't merely disappointment if you ask me... part of it looks a bit like embarrassment too? This isn't at all what she was expecting when she arrived (she has her old beach house for standards, which makes this extra underwhelming, I'm sure). She counts on Lo and Li to provide them with a place to stay, it goes implicit... and then this is what they do. It most likely isn't what she promised the other three in terms of where they'd stay, hence, I'd dare say there's a component of embarrassment here.

Shortly afterwards, we have our well known scene with Azula being utterly unconcerned with Lo and Li's apparent wisdom to the point of yawning over it. This, too, tells you she's just not interested in whatever those two have to say or bring to the table. Then, they show up again at mealtime and I think Azula just ignores them the whole scene.

After this? Lo and Li vanish until the finale. And what do they do in the finale? Why... it's the first time anyone expresses a verbal concern over Azula's wellbeing! Ah! A sign that Lo and Li have SOME affection for Azula! This time, you pesky Azula fans, you CAN'T twist this into a bad thing! For sure!

... Can't we, tho? :')

What IS Azula's reaction to: "We are concerned for your wellbeing"?

"My father asked you to come here and talk to me, didn't he‌? He thinks I can't handle the responsibility of being Fire Lord. But I will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history."

And here, my friends, is when we have finally hit the jackpot.

Lo and Li could have been Azula's Irohs. She could've had TWO of him! Then you'd say: "hey! Ozai is such a dick he let Azula have two elderly wise ladies guiding her but only gave one old wise dude to Zuko! Rude!" and it would be further proof of Ozai's favoritism of Azula, right?

... But actually?

Lo and Li are no such thing. Lo and Li aren't moral compasses for Azula in the least. Lo and Li are not beacons of wisdom that genuinely help her sort her way through life. Worth noting: THEY COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN THAT WAY. They're not. They're not part of mysterious secret societies, they don't help Azula in any objective, significant, tangible way... there's very much nothing to say they EVER fulfilled the role Iroh did for Zuko. What role, then, were they fulfilling instead?

Why... I think we ought to listen to Azula, shouldn't we?

My take: Lo and Li are OZAI'S STAND-INS.

Someone's going to say "hey why would you assume that when Azula said this in the middle of a breakdown?? Surely she was just DELUSIONAL and PARANOID and ashdgkadhsgkjgh...!"

... Let me counter that one with a fun little analysis excercise:

WHY are Lo and Li Azula's firebending teachers and advisors?

The finale very directly tells us these two are not benders. We could've assumed they were! They're not: Azula's teachers are non-benders.

Has a single person out there ever asked themselves WHY this is the case?

How the hell is Azula, prodigy of the blue fire, epic lightning, cruel and powerful and precise and deadly bending... training under two elderly nonbenders?

Bringing this to a real-life example: do you remember what it was like when you were in P.E. classes and your teacher told you to spend 20 minutes jogging, and if you ever stopped you had to do 20 crunches and then get back to the jogging, and every time you stopped he'd tell you the same thing and you'd want that guy to vanish from the face of the planet? I don't know if that was only my experience, but I rather doubt it.

What did kids typically think/say when that happened?

"I wanna see that old fart doing the same shit he's making us do..."

It's a headcanon indeed to say that this is how Azula must have felt over Lo and Li, but it's VERY likely to be the case. But I'd dare say, in Azula's case, it's even worse because, to put it in another way? It's like taking programming lessons from someone who's never learned a programming language. They'll tell you you're getting things wrong without knowing how to help you get them right because they just DON'T KNOW what you're doing, and are outright INCAPABLE of what you're trying to achieve. They can't offer good guidance based on experience because they have ZERO experience on that subject! And yet they want PERFECTION from you! They expect it!

Lo and Li are these teachers for Azula. We only see them in one scene? And yet everything in the rest of the show suggests that they bring nothing important to the table for Azula, be it professionally, be it personally, be it emotionally... not in any aspect of life.

And this, if you ask me, is why the OG show barely ever brings them into scenes. Why the comics flat-out forgot they existed and even featured people like Sozin and Azulon in Azula's beach hallucinations but NOT the two ladies who looked after her and trained her. Why the live-action didn't even FEATURE them.

And us? The fandom? The fic writers?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I READ A FIC THAT HAD LO AND LI INVOLVED IN IT.

I'm not even saying as main characters, I don't even know if that exists, frankly: I mean as minor, or background characters. I have NOT seen those two be used in basically ANY fics I've read. I've scarcely used them in mine! In fact, I PURPOSEFULLY got rid of them early on in Gladiator because I didn't want them to sabotage and get in the way of Azula's progress as a character and I believed they'd do exactly that. They were an obstacle rather than anything useful, so I did away with them and then realized they could still occasionally serve some purpose in certain situations: I even had Azula visit them once and they were actually helpful! Fancy that! But... that's it. That's as far as I could go with them. I can't do MORE with those two because they're not characters one particularly feels compelled to work with.

And from what I've seen? That's the case for everyone.

So, I ask again:

WHY ARE THEY THERE?

WHAT IS THEIR ROLE?

WHAT IS THE POINT OF AZULA HAVING NON-BENDING TEACHERS?

Let's go further and further into logical thinking here, shall we?

Azula is a child. Fourteen years of age at the time she's introduced in the OG show.

Azula has no power over many things around her, particularly, her upbringing. That's in the hands of the adults around her. Her mother, up until she vanished, had some hand in it, then, it all falls to Ozai.

Ozai has been Azula's sole parental figure since Ursa left.

Ozai is the one who would reasonably call the shots regarding Azula's education, as all parents are wont to do... ESPECIALLY when he's a king with absolute power over his children.

... so, Lo and Li? Ozai either gave them the position as Azula's teachers personally, or someone else (Ursa) did, and Ozai either didn't WANT to remove them from the role (cue "Ozai being sentimental over Ursa" theories), or Ozai didn't give a flying fuck about who was training his daughter (cue "Ozai is an abusive dick without a heart or a brain" theories).

Anyone, of course, would likely interject here to say surely Ozai ALSO trained Azula himself because that's what he'd do with his favorite kid, right? See. I don't even disagree with that notion.

BUT IT'S A HEADCANON.

We have zero evidence that Ozai trained her! None! I totally will write that into Azula's backstory in many of my stories, but there's NOTHING in canon to suggest this actually happened and that Ozai was genuinely, actively, frequently involved in her progress as a firebender. Assuming he HAD to be is, still, a headcanon. You can't say that with any more certainty than mine when I say I believe Azula loves spicy foods. Does it seem to be something that would fit with her character? I think so! But if eventually canon goes "AZULA CAN'T STAND SPICY FOODS LOL JOKE'S ON YOU!" I... can't even say a thing about it. People's food tastes aren't reflective of their personalities. They really could do whatever they want in that respect. And that's the case for ANYTHING that isn't part of the show's storytelling or the character backgrounds or any texts we consider canon!

POINT BEING: Ozai, regardless of what you want to headcanon, had Lo and Li as Azula's teachers. HIS FAVORITE CHILD... and her only official instructors are two non-benders. Yang added Kunyo as an old instructor of Azula's when she was young, sure! But Kunyo was sooooo qualified that baby Azula was already kicking his ass. So, for that matter? He doesn't really seem to have been a cornerstone of her firebending development and the only other known teachers for Azula are Lo and Li.

For the last time: Azula's teachers are NON-BENDERS. AS CHOSEN, SANCTIONED, APPROVED AND ACCEPTED BY OZAI.

And with those two remarking on absolutely STUPID stuff like "one hair out of place"? Azula still became the incredible firebender she was.

Cue, now, the irony where Zuko was stuck in the basics 3 years after setting out of the Fire Nation... WITH IROH ACTIVELY SERVING AS HIS MENTOR.

You're not gonna tell me that Lo and Li would EVER be better instructors than Iroh, or are you? Because that makes no sense. Full-stop. Iroh is supposed to be the most profound and complete firebender thorughout the show because he's spiritually enlightened even though I admit I think that's bullshit and he doesn't just teach Zuko how to set things on fire, he actually makes him learn theory and spirituality and his teachings are more profound than just "ONE HAIR OUT OF PLACE".

So.

Banished as he is, disgraced and seen as trash by Ozai, Zuko STILL has a better teacher than Azula does.

... Is this LOGICAL? Is this NORMAL? Does this make SENSE?

If you think Ozai's favoritism of Azula takes the shape of "I'll give you every little thing you ask for, sweetheart, I love you very much, here, have ten million doll houses so you can set them on fire, and all the ponies you ask for and on your next birthday I'll buy you a baby dragon and you'll get your own region of the Fire Nation to govern and a fancy title..."?

Then Lo and Li, unfortunately, are right here to be a HUGE contradiction with your interpretation of Ozai and Azula's relationship.

Azula should have THE BEST teachers. Azula does not. Azula doesn't even LIKE them. Azula is openly shown to dislike them! To be annoyed around them, ANGRY when they're teaching her, she feels they're here to keep tabs on her for her father! In a sense, they're Ozai's SPIES on her! :')

Hence? Ozai's favoritism of Azula MIGHT not be what everyone keeps pretending it is. Maybe Ozai didn't do everything to make Azula get things EASILY... and to be fair? That's not what Zuko said anyway. People interpreted it that way... but that's not REALLY what he says:

"Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky. "

Every line in this statement is absolutely questionable and all of it sounds like buuuuullshit to me. This is ZUKO'S perspective. And sorry not sorry, but it's tell-don't-show. People swear by his opinion of Azula and pretend he's absolutely objective about it. He's not.

But "Everything always came easy to her," does not mean "EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS HANDED OVER TO HER ON A SILVER PLATTER." And yet this is what the fandom has constantly interpreted it as.

Azula might just be a prodigy. Maybe she started out ten steps ahead of her brother: this does not mean she needs no guidance, no training, no help. She's seen training herself over perfectionism in her very second scene of Book 2. And the guidance she gets in order to achieve perfection is actually, objectively, stupid.

This is what Ozai chose for her. This is an OBSTACLE for her growth, just as much as Lo and Li were obstacles for me when I was starting with Gladiator! Azula doesn't have it EASY: she just works herself so damn hard that even shit that should HINDER her does NOT do that. And even when her brother objectively has spent THREE YEARS with an advantage in the shape of being trained by one of the VERY BEST firebenders out there? Azula is still beating Zuko at it. With two non-benders as her teachers.

Where am I going with all this?

To the fact that Lo and Li are overlooked in just about every instance of the fandom.

To the fact that nobody includes them, and their influence on Azula, in their analyses of who Azula is.

I've seen a shitstorm rising over the Netflix characterization of Azula: SHE'S TOO ANGRY, they say. Non-stop. She's sooooo hysterical, all the time! She's just pissed perpetually!

Well. I haven't finished the show yet. But the scenes I've seen Azula in so far? They don't fit the fandom's view of Azula because...

... they're not taking Lo and Li into account.

As usual.

:')

Azula's reactions around Lo and Li being frustration, anger, irritation EVEN in scenes like The Beach, where Azula was FINE until she sees them? That shit is storytelling that went over sooooooo many heads, EVEN MINE! When I saw people going on about how canon Azula is... not insecure? Not angry? Has no frustrations and was only ever smirking 24/7? I... didn't feel that was right. I knew it wasn't right. And when I thought about it hard enough? I realized that one reason why this interpretation of Azula is IMMEDIATELY dismissable is because of Lo and Li: those two constantly made Azula angry. Even if that wasn't their intent, it's nonetheless the effect they'd have on her. And Azula didn't like having them around. She CLEARLY didn't appreciate them the way Zuko does Iroh, for instance! And this could be taken as a flaw on Azula's part... if we EVER saw evidence that these two ladies actually love Azula as a grandchild, or so. If we had any evidence that they actually have cared for her in ways nobody else ever did. If maybe the ones Zuko talks about, upon saying "EVERYONE LOVES AZULA" were these two! And maybe he was jealous of them! Maybe he wanted two old ladies to watch his every move and tell him his every flaw!

... Clearly I'm joking about that last thing, but anyway...

There's nothing to tell us Lo and Li were anything but Ozai's assigned watchdogs to keep control and tabs over Azula. That Azula's immediate reaction upon hearing that someone cares about her is "Oh fuck off, my dad sent you here because he doesn't trust me!" is... telling. It's not just paranoia speaking, even if it sure can be read that way! It's actually Azula's perception of those two, which is 100% supported by what we saw of the twins throughout the show, WHENEVER we did see them: their roles in Azula's life are indeed to keep tabs on her, to keep her under control, to pressure her into perfection, AS OZAI'S AGENTS! Seen this way, it MAKES SENSE for Azula to disregard their concern and immediately assume it's FAKE. She isn't even shown to doubt it, never questions that MAYBE they did care about her! She assumes they don't...

... And considering that, as far as I know, the official concept is that they BOTH LEFT when Azula banished one of them only? That they didn't contest her command, staying to look after her even if she only wanted one? I mean, clearly Azula can't tell them apart, so they could've taken turns: one watches over Azula for 12 hours and the other for the next 12 hours, I don't goddamn know! But they didn't do that. They LEFT. And if they left? It means they don't care remotely as much as they say they do. Not to the point where they'd challenge Azula's orders and help her when they KNOW she's not okay.

And all of this further supports my point.

When we see Azula in the liveaction being angry, bitter, irritable at Ozai's choices?

I see a reflection of the same dynamics that the OG too subtly weaved into Azula's relationship with Lo and Li. I see Azula reacting against Ozai's control over her because she feels it's DISTRUST. She feels it means her father STILL needs to be convinced that she's competent, powerful, ready to do his bidding. It isn't a case where Azula's irritation comes from wanting to rebel against her father... it's Azula wanting her father to UNDERSTAND that she's 100% his supporter and will put everything on the line to serve him and the Fire Nation.

And it's very damn easy to read that exact same thing into Azula's dynamics with Lo and Li as it is to see it EXPLICITLY STATED in the liveaction.

My point?

What the liveaction did is not nearly as much of a distant characterization choice as people think it is.

Ozai is Azula's Achilles' Heel. Everything she became, everything she grew up to be, was for his sake. He molded her to become those things and simply didn't give a shit about raising a daughter, he treated her as a weapon, and absolutely pitted his children against each other, just as much as OTHER adults in their lives did. But the impact of Ozai on Azula in the OG is easy to ignore. Why? Because we SELDOM see them interacting. Because we don't get that side of Azula's character fully explored. Because they didn't want to explore Ozai's character either! They were as cheap as they could be with all these aspects and so, only the people who really got into analyzing things on a deeper level would be able to say, without a doubt, that Ozai abused Azula emotionally with all the expectations and demands he put on his own child. Through the golden child-scapegoat dynamic that people have been bringing up non-stop in the past years.

So, proving herself to her father is what Azula wants to do, more than anything. Proving worthy of his favor, of his approval, is the closest thing she can get to feeling loved. Which is depressing as fuck. Azula gets zero affection: it's not even conditional affection, there's NOTHING for her besides approving words if she gets anything right. And this show's work with Azula's character? It was meant to make these things less invisible to all the fans who like to pretend none of it exists. And yes, I've seen them, crawling all over Twitter shitting themselves in fits of rage because how dare that show pretend Azula EVER had a bad time in her perfect flawless life!!

Well, the irony is that the OG gives you a smidge of evidence -- and yet that's enough -- to show that Ozai was doing very similar things to Azula in ATLA, and her reactions to it?

Huh. No smirks for Lo and Li.

No smirks for the symbols of Ozai's control over her life.

It's almost like the confidence, the smirks, the apparent ease with which she handles everything? Is a front that crumbles easily whenever it concerns the ONE PERSON with power over her life.

I don't believe, worth noting, that Azula's power comes from rage. I've seen people say that in fandom in the past and I find it a completely absurd take when Iroh himself spells out that her bending is about control, about precision, and it's Azula's FURY that makes her a sloppy mess in the finale. It's even INTENTIONAL that when she shoots lightning a second time, in her second establishing scene, THAT SAME HAIR FALLS OUT OF PLACE. She's still angry. She didn't get it "right" this time either. She's imperfect and she's trying NOT to be, but she cannot succeed. And upon bending lightning with emotions (rage/frustration)? That hair falls YET AGAIN out of place. Proof that she's not going to achieve the perfection she's being FORCED (indeed, by her father and the people who are here to represent him, Lo and Li) to strive for.

The liveaction had Ozai pushing Azula for a perfection she couldn't attain either. She's perfectly content in her cruelty at Ozai's side, right until she hears the Avatar was found and that Zuko has a shot at taking away the privileges she's been basking in so far. That she WASN'T nervous about this in canon is pretty damn obvious: OZAI SENT HER TO HUNT ZUKO DOWN FOR BEING A FAILURE. We never saw her reaction to learning that the Avatar was out and about. We have noooo idea what was canonically going on with her back then. The first time we see her besides the flashback is Azula receiving a mission that tells her she's STILL #1 and Zuko is no threat to her because Ozai thinks he's a failure. Thus? She had nothing to fear. Here? Ozai is actively using Zuko as bait to pressure Azula further. And if you're so confident in Ozai's good parenting skills as to believe he somehow WOULDN'T do that? Sounds like you don't understand the very basic and simplistic Fire Lod Ozai from ATLA, and that's not something to be proud of. So probably stop screaming your bad takes at the top of your lungs, because being incapable of understanding Ozai in canon is not a badge of pride, just saying...

FINAL POINT...

This post is not written expressly in the defense of the liveaction and its characterization of Azula. To this point, what I've seen of it doesn't feel WRONG or OFF unless you're the kind of person who thinks Azula is only capable of smirking and if she stops doing that she stops existing or something. Only people who cannot understand the depth, nuance, subtleties in Azula's story would ever be claiming that Azula's relationship with Ozai COUDLN'T be like this, or that Azula couldn't possibly be frustrated with her father or his choices when it's soooo clear what Ozai is going for, and why it's working. But in order to read Azula as a character capable of this range of emotion, frustration and ambition, all at once? You have to be able to treat this character, be it in the liveaction or the OG show, as a human being.

And that's what most the people criticizing this specific change are determined not to do. It's what makes them uncomfy. It's what rustles their jimmies.

Yes. I'm saying it in this very demeaning way because I actually find it quite ridiculous to be this insecure over the portrayal of a fictional 14yo in two TV shows. Whether the liveaction sticks the landing or fails catastrophically, I do not know... but I do know that if it's forcing a bunch of people to rethink Azula's character, and making them panic at the idea that she could EVER have human emotions, even if they're AWFUL human emotions?

Then I'm afraid you're only convincing me that, as bad as that show could ever get? It's getting SOMETHING right. I do love to see misinterpretations of Azula getting slammed in the face by the reality that all those beliefs, headcanons and takes in bad faith are actively, categorically untrue: none of which makes Azula a fundamentally good person, worth noting! But it makes it very clear that reading her as a one-dimensional basic villain, which is what the anti-Azula-redemption crowd actively does, is literally only possible if you overlook, ignore and fail to understand her character and her complexities, be it in the liveaction or in the original show.

There. I said my piece.

Another post, regarding the rest of the liveaction, is bound to come later. I'd say stay tuned but it might take me a while to write it at all. So... wait around and maybe you'll see it someday!

#azula #atla #natla #yep :')#I'm doing it #because I know the bad takes are everywhere so #let's see if mine actually gets any visibility this way #can of worms here we goooooooooo #(this is a bad idea I know it is I'm having a leave of my senses)#(but sometimes you just gotta watch the world burn and this has been... a complicated sad day)#also sorry if anyone saw it without the read more oops I thought I'd put it there #so either tumblr ate it or I forgot yikes #but now it's theeeere #sorryyyyyyyy

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griancraft · 2 months

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Hi guys, this is sort of my official "please, for the love of god, listen to Skyjacks with me” post because I’m losing my mind and all the content I can find is from the latest stuff right now, and I don’t want to spoil myself. I want to be able to talk about this with people!!!! I will make a watch (listen) party discord if there is enough interest. Just give it a chance; you won’t regret it. Also, some information may be wrong or outdated. I’m on episode 11 out of over 200.

Skyjacks is a ttrpg podcast about sky pirates in a world where there was a catastrophe about 200 years ago that left the sea unsafe to sail and maybe even damaged the entire world to the point where civilization is scattered and in small groups. There is very casual queer rep, and it’s casual to the point where it really just fits into the world perfectly.

A brief summary of the premise of the first episode will hopefully get you hooked. I’m really bad at summaries, but I promise it’s a billion times better than how I talked about it here:

Captain Orimar Vale is dead, and a mutiny will be on Gable, Jonnit, Travis, and Dref’s hands if they are unable to keep up the ruse of him being alive. To do this, necromancy (deeply forbidden magic) is performed by the Dref, the ship's doctor, to turn him into a semi-functional zombie. Captain Orimar is famous for his abilities as a captain; to replicate this will take great skill.

As they run out of supplies, they make a desperate decision: port on the land of one of Orimar’s scorned lovers or deal with the growing uneasiness of the rest of the crew. They haven’t seen their captain healthy in months, and whispers about his health are starting. However, greater danger will await them when they take to the skies again, lurking just beyond the clouds…

And more propaganda as to why I think you guys will like it:

There are unique and interesting gameplay mechanics they use to tell a really cool story, and if you like Hermitcraft or any other sorta storytelling-based SMP, I promise you’ll like it. Like. If you liked Boatem from Hermitcraft 8, you’ll love the characters in Skyjacks. The players are exceptionally good at playing their characters, their humour is unmatched by anything similar I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, and the story is prioritized, which I think is an amazing choice.

Best part? It’s still ongoing after, like, 5 years. Some people have left, but a good chunk of the OG cast has stayed. Not that leaving is bad, because holy crap, 5 years is a long time, and stories have to end at some point! It’s a good way of getting into something and knowing there is still a shit ton of content to be explored.

The music is good. The story is good. The characters and humour are amazing. The lore of the world is sprinkled throughout, and as you learn more about the world, the more excited you get. It’s incredible so far, and if you decide to listen to it, I will actually love you forever and ever. My boyfriend is on episode 190, and he finds it so funny every time I go. Oh my god, this is so cool.

Link to the podcast, but in a playlist (up to 180). So it’s in order and easy to find, since it’s a part of something else from the oneshot network:

#I need you guys to get into skyjacks I cannot do this alone #Can’t even look in the skyjacks tag for fan art to loose my mind about because I am literally over 200 1hr+ episodes BEHIND #I promise it is so worth it #I’m almost done episode 11 :#which is so so early so it would be very easy to catch up to me #I’m going to reblog this once a day or so I think #collapses in a heap of dust this post was never supposed to be this long #also please don’t spoil me if you’re ahead or get ahead guys istg i will kill you with my bare hands I’ll put my episode number in my pinne #ack tags too long #me when I infodump for 45 minutes straight when I should be working on my final essay #I’m dragging you fuckers kicking and screaming. Please guys.#I realize now this will like definitely show up in the tags but honestly I don’t know if that matters

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iraprince · 1 year

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I love the entire concept of Cookie... the look, the fashion, the gender... Would you mind telling us a little more about him? I'm also intrigued about why she's named Cooking with Gorgeous!

HI i would LOVE to talk about george thank you so much. also this makes me realize i've never actually sat down and just made a post unabashedly infodumping at length abt an oc before and it seems silly that i haven't. i ask only for all dear readers to please temper their expectations for this post with the knowledge that i just smoked half a joint before sitting down to answer it. a small one. but still. anyway

FIRST OF ALL FOR THE UNACQUAINTED THIS IS COOKING WITH GORGEOUS, aka cookie or george for short. he uses he/him and she/her pronouns interchangeably!

hi sorry that's not cookie that's a horse in a bridal veil that i. found in my stuff while trying to scroll and find my cookie art. i just got distracted and had to show you. okay no for real here's cookie

he's the character i'm playing in a playtest campaign of the absolutely mesmerizing sapphicworld, an in-development ttrpg!!! and if i'm going to be talking about cookie i feel like i HAVE to say i think a huge amount of her charm and dazzle and charisma comes directly from the charm and dazzle and charisma of the setting i created her for. i know i am laying it on really thick right now but that is on purpose. i want, desperately and unashamedly, for this game to get really popular bc 1. it's genuinely that good. and it's not even DONE yet and 2. i want everyone to get into it so that everyone will make sapphicworld characters and then i'll get to see everyone's sapphicworld characters.

EDIT i'm scrolling back up here and adding a readmore bc this is already getting so long lol. you asked for "a little more" and apparently i have graciously decided this means "literally every fact about cookie that exists in my brain"

SO a lot of the info/tidbits i haven't shared about cookie are i guess gameplay-specific stuff... his title (which is like a class/playbook) is "The Noble Sweetheart," though in sapphicworld "nobility" no longer has anything to do with wealth or class, and is instead entirely about amassing a court purely via devotion/popularity; her subculture (which is like, Who You Hang Out With; drifters, goths, poets, debauchers, cowpokes, etc) is Babe; and her kind (which is like ancestries but in sapphicworld is really just like, a physical form, which u can change more or less at will) is Lunarthrope, which is basically a werewolf!! or more broadly a furry, since u always look like whatever were-animal you are 24/7. just MORE at night, tho i suppose i don't represent that aspect much in my cookie art... ANYWAY i am restraining myself from just sitting here and like. transcribing her entire character sheet. but basically what all this means is that cookie's role in the world (at least at the beginning of the campaign) is "Professionally — no, VOCATIONALLY Hot Person who everyone loves so so so so so so much." cookie really enjoys this role.

he's named cooking with gorgeous because he's an avid cook, and he wants to share that with you, and he's gorgeous!! though honestly the cooking hasn't ended up as important to his character as it was when i first came up with him, lol — but my initial concept was kind of like, what's the equivalent of a bouncy normie recipe blogger/lifestyle influencer but in the context of the lush horny trans deathless psychedelic universe of sapphicworld. and it's cooking with gorgeous, a doggirl dyke with big blue boobs (six of them!!) who is so devastatingly cute and darling that a bunch of people just kind of pledge their fealty to him for no real reason other than he feeds them. and is cute

also her name is def influenced by the fantastic names of many canon sapphicworld npcs! like, quick example list of some npc names off the top of my head: the booty commie, death cybernetic, princess eureka!, the culinary goof (whom cookie dislikes. btw.), pizza friday (whom cookie loves!!!)

cookie is very very determined, and she's ALMOST always very confident. even when she isn't feeling confident, she's still very good at forcing herself to keep putting one foot in front of the other — maybe just while screaming or crying or uncontrollably barking or at least very ardently complaining. he has a tendency to be spoiled and, like, tactless-via-obliviousness, so sometimes he can be grating to interact with, and he has a petty/vindictive streak; but in general he's an AGGRESSIVELY kind person and usually aims all his shrill, cheerful stubbornness directly toward the goal of refusing to accept anything but the best for everyone.

at the beginning of our campaign cookie has JUST received a brand new castle!!!! (chateau gorgeous.) which he doesn't actually "own" bc, remember, no wealth or class in sapphicworld, but he's the ENTHUSIASTIC new caretaker and is chomping at the bit to renovate it so ppl can live there and he can throw a bunch of magnificent parties and basically continue living exactly as he has been, But Even More Fabulous. obviously this is exactly when the main plot threat of the campaign shows up and spoils everything and compels cookie to go on his First Ever Adventure!!!!!! she HAS to save the world otherwise NOBODY will be able to go to the first big party at chateau gorgeous :((((

at this point to prevent myself from just like, giving you guys a play by play of the entire campaign so far i am going to just start listing every cookie fact i can think of as bullet points

🎀 he owns a magical sword in the shape of a giant microplane. it's called The Microplane. he pronounces this "mee-crow-plah-nay"

🎀 george desperately wants to resurrect The Dog-Lich, an entity that once ruled over all beasts from its palace on the moon but was murdered and torn to pieces in a cosmic war far in the past. her attitude towards this desire is 50% devoted lunar cultist, 50% parasocially obsessive twitter stan

🎀 this isn't really a cookie fact but going back to how his title is The Noble Sweetheart — just for a glimpse at party composition, his fellow party members' titles are The Intimate Scholar, The Tentacle Advocate, and The Tw*nk Controversial (the * is the canon spelling).

^ aforementioned tw*nk. its name is Mwah ("pronounced like the kiss you blow at someone you just fucked over"). mwah is played by @/squiddelyfather on twitter!

🎀 mwah and cookie used to be very, very tight, BEFORE mwah became the tw*nk controversial. now that it's so.... you know.... controversial, well. they're still very close, but it has gotten a little stilted and weird (and watching them slowly un-weird it together as the campaign goes on has been one of my fav roleplay experiences ever honestly)

🎀 cookie's other adventuremates, skarligge and delaryn, are both very indulgent towards him. delaryn acts the most grumpy/dismissive about it but is honestly sometimes the worst about spoiling cookie out of anyone in the party (skarligge's player is twt@/clown_dream and delaryn's is twt@/glaiveguisarme and hey while im at it our fantastic gm is the sapphicworld dev, twt@/ddemoneclipse. hi guys i hope u don't mind me chattering abt ur ocs here lol it's just hard to talk abt the best of cookie w/o bringing up everyone else's characters and roleplay also!!!)

🎀 cookie is very VERY sensitive and will burst into tears at the drop of a hat. the precursor to this is her eyes getting So So So Big And Wet And Round. one of my favorite bits to menace the other party members with is when something is not going cookie's way i will lean into my mic and say "cookie's eyes are getting so so so big. they're getting so big and wet and round and shiny. they're so so round and fucking big her eyes are like big wet black glass marbles" and this is like kryptonite to them. this is like getting hit with deadly radiation

🎀 oh speaking of fashion!!!! one of cookie's perks from being a Babe is that she can always change her look whenever she wants. she will ALWAYS have whatever outfit she needs and can quickchange instantly. wait this reminds me i have a bunch of seasonal holiday outfits sketched out and i don't think i've ever posted them here but it'll only let me put one more image in this post. well here have this one

🎀 okay well suddenly i have forgotten all other george facts so that's all for now!!! from now on i will try to just dump oc facts like this more often tho this is really fun. ty for getting me going lol!!!

#my ocs #my art #cooking with gorgeous #sapphicworld

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 4 months

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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alpaca-clouds · 5 months

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The DnD Lore Problem - Accessibility and Characters (and how BG3 might not help)

You know what? I am gonna talk about DnD Lore and the accessibility of that lore. I talked about this exessively before. But to summarize that long blog very shortly:

Wizards of the Coasts currently makes the mistake of putting basically most DnD Lore behind a paywall, rather than offering official ressources. This leads to a lot of tables actually playing with their original worlds, rather than Toril/Faerûn, which in turn also means, that they are not spending money on official products. While my anti-capitalist ass things that the lore should be accessible just so that people can enjoy it, I also think that this inaccessibility actually costs WotC A LOT OF MONEY.

Today I want to talk about another aspect of this inaccessibility, that is kinda linked to some of the stuff I talked about before, but also is linked to the things WotC is currently not doing in terms of both Honor Among Thieves and Baldur's Gate 3. A thing, that also might not quite work with BG3, though.

See, the core problem of this inaccessibility is, that a) there is no official place where you can just get base information about the world and the timeline, b) this world has grown organically for about half a century, which lead to clutter, but also to the fact that things are at times showing their age.

I might actually make a post on the gods and religion in the world at some other point - but for now let me talk about something else: Extended universes and access points.

The Problem with Extended Universes

Okay, let's talk about how a lot of the big franchises for the longest time have told their meta stories - including DnD - and how it kinda struggles to find its audience. The extended universe.

I am frankly not entirely sure what franchise has started this. I am assuming it was Star Trek? But that is just a guess. But at some point in the 60s oder 70s someone had the idea that: "Hey, we could totally give the fans more to chew on by making official tie-in comics and novels!"

And that was how it worked for very long. Like a lot of the big franchises had at times around 10 novels and comics (if not more) releasing per year that would just explore other parts of the universe and allow the very engaged fans to... well, learn more about the world. Now, I am not going to talk about all the drama connected to the Star Wars stuff, but if you know, you know.

DnD did this too. (As did a lot of the big TTRPG systems, like Shadowrun and WoD as well.) Having a lot of tie in stuff - in the case of DnD mostly novels - that told more stories on the world and also established like some big player characters within the world. Elminster Aumar is probably one of the best examples here.

Those established some characters that play a big role within the world and also told just more stories of those big world changing events. In the recent DnD history that would be stuff like the Time of Troubles, the Spellplague and the Second Sundering.

Now, here we have one big issue. And one issue where I am not entirely certain where it arose from. But the fact is: In recent years, people invest way less into those kind of books. This is just a fact.

It is the reason why those big universes went from publishing like ten novels a year to often not more than three. We saw that in the failure of the extended Universe Disney tried to pull off for Pirates of the Caribbean (though I will still maintain that another big problem was that they barely marketed that at all - hi, everyone, who did not know there were extended universe novels for PotC). We also saw that with League of Legends, who really, really tried to tell a lot more stories with short stories and then also some novels set in Runeterra, before finally giving up, because most people didn't care.

In terms of Dungeons & Dragons I can totally see that a lot of people will also say: "I do not care what some other people's characters do within the world." Buuuuuut...

Stories actually can help you understand the world. Which brings me to...

The Elminster Problem

Okay, I do not know how to put this, but... If you look at the novels coming out for DnD literally half of them focus on either Elminster Aumar or Drizzt Do'Urden. Characters that have pretty much been around since the very beginning and. Look, I don't know how to put it but... It shows.

I am currently reading some of the newer novels and the fact is, that they do not really feel like fantasy books from the 2010s and 2020s. Because Elminster and Drizzt are very clearly characters originating in a very different time when stories were told very differently.

I mean, just look at Elminster. He is a wanna-be Gandalf character. He is from the early, early days of fantasy and... Look, I personally just really am unable to identify with a character like this.

And while Drizzt is a bit better as a character, but even he... How to put this delicately? They are both very much characters written by white cishet men for white cishet men. There, I said it.

I am noticing this a lot with reading Salvatore's books currently. Like, female characters are not overly sexualized, which is a plus. But they also very much exist most of the time in service to a man or at least in relation to a man. There is not a lot of female characters running around that have their own agency.

Which kinda leads to another thing. I actually saw this one brought up by one of those very cliché nerdy Youtube channels talking on DnD, who recognized the problem as well: There are basically two large groups of DnD players who barely intersect. One is the cliché nerds, the other is a largely queer and largely diverse group. And the youtube guy, who was very in the white cishet nerd group, suspected that actually the later group makes up more of the player base by now.

Buuuut... that is also the group who really do not get catered to by the canon lore so far. That was until 2023 with DnD:HAT and BG3 - both catering actually a lot to those groups.

Honor Among Thieves and the undermarketed books

Okay, here is the thing: Honor Among Thieves had two novelizations (one for young readers, one for older readers) and two tie-in novels. One featuring Edgin, Holga, Forge and Simon before the stuff with Sofina went down. And the other featuring Simon and Doric taking place at the time while Ed and Holga are in prison.

I am honest: I really, really liked the Ed and Holga novel. It was super cute and charming and really gives a better understanding of the characters.

But of course once again there is the thing: The books - just like the Pirates of the Caribbean books - were super undermarketed. Like, most people I know off do not even know that there were books released. Heck, even within the actual active fandom there are again and again people who will be surprised that those books exist.

And... I actually also think that the books waste one big ass opportunity, by not at all tying into the broader lore. They are super self-contained.

And that is actually just a waste. Because the place were Edgin lived in? Yeah, that place was super affected by the Second Sundering. Heck, that might have had to do something with his troubles.

Why is that an issue? Well, because... there was not a lot going on there that was inviting you to further interact with the world and learn more abotu what is happening. For once, again, because I think it is a super fun and interesting world. But also, because... WotC wants to make money and is so bad at it, that it really boggles my mind.

See, here is the thing: They could've used those characters - that really are fun and sympathetic characters - to create an accesspoint into that world.

Alright, so what about Baldur's Gate 3?

Which brings me to Baldur's Gate 3 and the thing that a lot of people have noticed: The other Baldur's Gate games - as well as some of the other games releasing around 2000 - had their own tie-in novels going into the characters, their background, but also what they were doing in the future.

Something that so far BG3 has not done, which some fans have already critized. Because a lot of people have actually gotten really invested into those characters. A lot of the kind of people especially who so far are underserved by a lot of the tie-in stuff: Queer and generally diverse audiences.

Like, I think there would be a lot of people, who totally would read a novel, about...

Astarion getting drawn into some sort of political intrigue in Baldur's Gate while serving Cazador

Karlach's time in Avernus

Some Adventure Wyll got dragged into while being the Blade of the Frontier.

Shadowheart going onto a mission for Shar (maybe together with Nocturne)

Whatever Gale was doing during the Second Sundering

Lae'zel's youth among the Githyanki

The Dark Urge and Gortash starting up the entire conspiracy

... whatever Halsin had been up to in his long live

Heck, people would eat that stuff up. And you could not only use it to worldbuild but also once more create some access into the world and what happened there. And they are kinda wasting a lot of potential by not bringing out those novels.

Of course, there is one big problem: BG3 makes it kinda hard to write about anything happening after the ending. Because as it is right now, someone is gonna be pissed if a novel set after the game does not go with the decision for a character they go for. Like, Ascended Astarion fans are gonna be pissed, if they go with Spawn Astarion - and the other way around. Same goes with every other character where you have those big decisions happening.

This is something they will have to tackle eventually if they plan on doing something with the characters in the future (no matter if we are talking Larian or WotC), but it is definitely an issue that just arises from the structure of the game.

Bonus of course is, that you just cannot define a canonical Tav. But without a Tav, you also gotta act as if the story of the game happened without a Tav, which still is not ideal. I am honestly not sure with how they are gonna deal with this on the long run.

Access via Characters

Alright, but what is the actual issue here?

Well, basically there are two hurdles to overcome for the accessibility of the lore. The first is the physical accessibility - aka, what I talked about in the last long blog post. The second meanwhile is more related to making the lore engaging. And that happens through characters.

It is for me what happened last year. I actually tried to engage with the lore as the movie came out - but only when BG3, that tied a lot more into the actual lore was released I actually found proper access to the lore. Because I had concrete things I could now look for because the game hinted at so much both through characters and major story events happening.

Here is the thing: If you just have the lore on its own, it is about as engaging as reading a history book. Sure, as your local history nerd I find reading history books fun, but most people really do not want to read a history book to engage with a hobby.

People will however engage with stories and characters that interest them. Which is where we get back to the thing I talked about at the beginning: Right now most canonical novels and stories still cater to an audience that is male, cishet, white and also, let's be frank, definitely over 30 years old. Leaving behind a lot of potential fans that theoretically make up a big part of the player-base, but actually do not engage a lot with the lore for this exact reason.

Look. DnD right now is fairly close to being an actual mainstream hobby, due to the recent proliferation of formerly nerdy stuff. And yet WotC is bleeding money, especially in regards of DnD.

If you ask me, sure... DnD should go into public domain. But it doesn't. And given that there are so many creative, skilled people working on this - no matter how dumb Hasbro is and how shitty of an employer they are - I actually do want them to succeed. I have really become engaged with this world now. And I think it is a pity that they clearly do not know how to market this stuff.

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blackbirdsnonsense · 3 months

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I think I'm gonna have to get this Twyla cause I love she comes with D20s.

Also, that board implies she's playing a TTRPG based on Monster High itself.

OK, I've now headcanoned an idea that Twyla made a private RPG of Monster High to help her deal with social situations like Reg Barkly did in TNG.

Then after she became friends with the main boos, they stumbled upon the board & convinced her to start an actual campaign.

They leave based on the school but decide on a new background & play different/exaggerated versions of themselves.

Basically, since no one really likes it anyway, their campaign is G2.

Which explains why it's the more adventure focused series.

Also the reason Ghoulia isn't there is because she's the only one who understands you're supposed to create a NEW character & so that's why we have Moanica & her army of Zomboyz.

Cause Goulia waned to play an evilish character.

It also explains why G2 Cleo is such a goober cause Cleo doesn't really know how to play the game, she just wants to spend time with Frankie.

And why they spend so much time together in that series.

The Maplogue is just their excuse to go different places without having to always go through the steps of it.

It's honestly amazing how much this idea works if you really think about it.

#monster high #monster high g3 #monster high g2 #twyla bogeyman #frankie stein #clawdeen wolf #cleo de nile #lagoona blue #draculaura

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actionsurges · 6 months

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Curiosity question if you don't mind from a newbie dm. How do you deal with tpk as a dm ? Where you super stressed as it was happening or was it ok cause you could communicate with the players ?

this is the first time i've ever had a tpk happen. several things happened and several things contributed to the way i ran things and why i think my players are okay with the outcome and i'll talk about them now. some of these i think are tips that can be applicable to dming, some of them are just personality things, and some of them speak to group synergy.

i know this party well. i know the PLAYERS at this table that i was doing this campaign with well and we know how to communicate, 3/4 of us dm for each other and we are all typically good at knowing what each other will enjoy

we communicate well, even if it takes a minute out of session. for example, in another game we play where i'm a player some of the decisions i was making as my pc were bringing down another player, and while we all agreed at the start that it was okay, things changed, and so i changed the way i was playing my character and they're swapping out their pc for awhile to play a different character.

i think it's important to note with the two examples above, your mileage really will vary when it comes to communication with other people because one's capacity for interpersonal communication has nothing to do with their enjoyment of the game. likewise, you might have great friends but realize you don't enjoy playing d&d with each other. things happen.

i think something any ttrpg player can keep in mind is that just because you like someone doesn't mean you like playing a 4 hour board game with them once every two weeks and viceversa. just because you get along to play a game doesn't mean you need to be best friends with someone you don't feel that close to outside the game.

some actual thoughts of mine regarding tpks and what happened in session that i feel like made it a successful session instead of something that felt horrible and unfair

i did not make the encounter with the goal to kill my entire party or even to kill one of them. i wanted a hard fight, cr is hard to balance, usually you have to punch way above your party's weight class to have a fight feel scary and challenging. that is what i was doing. the fight was very winnable. it just came down to roll of the dice. i think they could've taken them down but that's just not the way it turned out. the encounter itself did not feel hopeless, that is important. the alternate to this is i am not against, as a dm, flagging that a fight IS hopeless and that the party should flee. that is run very differently than how i ran this encounter, i was not signposting for them to run, i thought they would win.

when the first player dropped and then rolled a nat1 i asked them this: by raw this is failing two death saves, however, if you want this to be an automatic death you can choose that. i do not want to choose for you, i want you to make the choice that is fun for you. pc death is not fun unless you have fun with it. and then to keep a bit of mystery, i direct message'd them where i thought we could take their pc's story if they died / what the 'resurrection quest' could be. the player ended up deciding that auto death could be fun.

at this point, i did not know that i would successfully knock the other two players. and when it became clear that i could and was on the cusp of it, i asked them both something similar. do you both want to roll death saves and fight to the last breath or do you want to die. here's what will happen. they were excited by the death option.

my players chose to tpk. their characters did not, narratively they did not, the challenge was fair but hard and they failed narratively. failure should never be the end and should not be a punishment. the story moves forward. i presented an idea for where the story could go from the failure and they were enthusiastic about it.

after session i also checked in with the group and said, hey if you get second thoughts about this let me know and we can retcon that fight. i do not want to play a game that is not fun for you. as it stands now, they're all really excited about the idea of clawing their way back from the grave whenever we pick up a new story arc with those characters again.

and that's really what it boils down to for me as a dm whose spent a lot of time as a player in the game. pc death is not fun unless the player is excited about it. if they aren't okay with it, it will not be fun for anyone involved.

the game is about roll of the dice, the game is about story, the game is about mechanics and challenges and puzzles, but most of all it is about having fun. so if something is not fun, you don't have to do it.

i could talk forever about how i feel like there are some dms who take so so much pride in their intricate plots and ideas that they keep secret to their last breath without actually collaborating with their players which i think is actually a detriment.

#dm advice #i can talk more about my opinions on PC death in general and what i call 'resurrection quests' if you'd like and this is sort of a mismash #of my opinions on party synergy and above board communicaiton as well as improv from the dm chair.

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 1 month

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tuesday again 4/30/2024

most annoying book i've read so far this year under the jump

listening

a lovely polyrhythmic instrumental piece with previously-featured tuesdaysong artist, terrifying master of the cello, abel selaocoe. this is very textured and kind of scrubs at the inside of my skull in a pleasing way. like the kind of back scrubber you can buy with a bamboo handle and the long soft bristles. popped up on my recent releases playlist from spotify.

youtube

reading

really fucking pissed about this book and i am not able to be reasonable about it. i was really thrown, much like the fantasy prince's mother from her carriage as she was being chased by regency gossip reporters, that this was a prince harry/meghan markle RPF AU. i am a bit uncomfy about the fact that our female lead, the fantasy AU meghan markle, is some flavor of fantasy Gaelic instead of fantasy mixed-race. now, i have no particular moral or physical beef with RPF but i don't typically seek it out. but/also/and, much like works about marilyn monroe, i think works with the specter of princess diana are in poor taste. can we leave these women alone maybe

i got about halfway through the book before this revelation and didn't really feel like it succeeded at much of anything it was trying to do. oddly informal and choppy, like it was originally intended as a contemporary romance with some urban magic and changed to regency in a late draft. this is combined with some fairly weak prose: more simple sentence structure than i would expect in a book for young adults, far too many proper nouns, and a lack of interest in showing not telling.

i straight up don't understand why the leads are attracted to each other if she keeps making very public mistakes and he's a rude cunt. i have read other books (most recently the t kingfisher books) where someone grows to love a very gruff or taciturn man, but it takes time and mutual trust and an effort on both sides, none of which happen here. the core conflict is duty to family in all its various forms vs the heart wants what the heart wants. the conflict is not much of a conflict, though, because characters come to realizations within three sentences of confronting them and then vocalize them with therapyspeak. someone literally pats someone else's hand and goes, "It's hard, I know." the author mercifully did not describe the sad little pursed sympathy mouth but i'm sure it was there.

i'm also deeply annoyed with how this author chose to go about characterization. while the character concepts are people i would love to meet in a ttrpg, it feels very concerned about Good Representation and it makes everyone feel very wooden. i think when you put together characters from a list of various oppressions and disabilities it starts feeling like a grownup version of a children’s ensemble show meant to sell little blind box figurines. here is the Chronically Ill one, and her color is pink! here is the Addicted one, and his color is green! here is the Goth and Depressed one, and her color is black with some bones! here is the Gay one who was once badly hurt by the Addicted one, and we don’t care enough about him to give him a color! here is the superficially fantasy-Jewish one, and we don’t care enough about her to give her a color or an action figure either!

while normally i would love to read a book with two! TWO! canonically bisexual leads of different genders! this book is written for the "folx" spectrum of gays instead of the "fags" part of the spectrum and it strays very close to a modern morality tale for me.

this popped up on a list of books with bi leads i think, but if it was here or on libby i cannot remember.

anyway! fucking hated this one.

pleasantly surprised these came in back to back off my holds lists, bc they are about the perfumer Grace and Grace's former landlord, the spy Marguerite. my favorite of these Saint of Steel series is still the one with the werebear nun. i have nothing to complain about these books and not much to say about them either. they were such a delightful and competent change of pace after the annoyance of the previously discussed book.

oh i loved these. oh i LOOOOOOVED these. how the fuck does novik do it. she is so good at capturing the very specific feel of a grandpa military historical novel. except with dragons. i love these in the same way i know i will love the patrick o'brien books if i ever get around to reading them. i was a navy brat and unfortunately this is fucking catnip to me. truly i have inherited all my father's tastes

watching

largely fallow week. i don't have anything particularly great to say about The Bad Batch, but when have i ever. have not caught up with dunmeishi bc my siblings have once again inadvertently locked me out of the netflix account i pay for. considering a vpn for many reasons but watching netflix and watching porn (the state of texas does not want me or anyone else to watch porn within her borders) are the two big reasons for. idk. cashing out the paltry cash-back credit card rewards and coughing them up for a vpn. vpn opinions welcomed, i know most of them are straight garbage

playing

i straight up ran out of money in genshin, which is pretty hard to do since they're pretty generous with it? i have spent several million in-game currency on leveling up neuvilette (i am so so so happy to not have to collect any fucking starfish mats for him anymore [mats are different materials you have to collect or buy in-game in order to level up a character. very grindy most of the time]). anyway i am now scrabbling around for the last couple chests and puzzles i marked on my map in fontaine. i haven't bothered with grinding for his specific boosting artifacts or leveling up his talents all the way yet but this is really not shabby. i have the bad habit of completely levelling up all my 5-stars and then ignoring them until i need them for a specific fight or a specific level of the monthly..battle royale puzzle? i don't really know how to describe the abyss. anyway when i do eventually need his pretty intense water AOE attacks i will frantically grind for his talent mats. right now we're grinding for other things thanks

this latest update contains both the best and worst new areas so far. the underwater lost city of Remuria is a fuckin banger. gorgeous. incredible puzzles. very fun music-based quest line with new abilities and giant whale. however, im kind of disappointed by the new coastline area in the map: there is pretty much nothing there. almost no interactable plants to harvest, very few enemies, almost no chests. i get that they are focusing their time and attention on the new underwater area everyone will be focusing on (killer, btw, super dense and great use of vertical space). very lore-heavy expansion, sort of what if atlantis was a bit roman-inspired and also. hold on. wait a second.

sorry this has just occurred to me at 10:21 PM on Monday night as im drafting this but oh my god are the fucking fontanians the Sea Peoples of the bronze age collapse. this is hysterically funny lore if true. im going to have to go back and reread a lot of the environmental storytelling notes but oh my GOD that's extremely funny if true. genshin has some of the most batshit lore of any game ive ever played and im so sad that so few game journos are focusing on it.

where was i. leveling up characters in legally-not-france who may or may not be descendants of the sea peoples. i often find myself leveling up characters in genshin not based on how useful they are to the party but by how fun the bosses i need to fight for their mats are? for example: neuvilette is a water-based AOE character with not a lot of on-field time. however this big electric seahorse, whose antlers i need to level him up, is really fun to fight and i can knock it out in about thirty seconds.

making

my sister's birthday is tomorrow! my birthday package to her was kind of heavy on stupid little trinkets and art books and not very much like. homemade? so i cranked out a little sampler. it's framed i promise i simply forgot to take a picture of it framed. about 3"x3", slightly adapted from a piece in Julie Jackson's Subversive Cross Stitch. i do think the F and C turned out way better (or at least the backstitching stands out way more) but hey. sometimes you need to hastily stitch a gift with the limited colors you have on hand

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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