And she shall smite the wicked

rotating a new character named Sibyl in my head

celebratory valkas also

Interrupting your regularly scheduled broadcast to show you this super fun halloween commission i had the absolute pleasure of working on. This guy was a blast to draw~

*Info and links for my commissions in pinned post*

Look, a lot of things have happened in my Mausritter game. Haunted dungeons, a harrowing escape from a massive snake, warding off the Ghost Owl, outrunning the cult of the Roach God while the sewers flooded.

But the thing that had my players on their feet was seeing the young cowardly guard mouse they adopted from the first town growing up in real time before them.

They found the dispatches on the city rat scouts that told of the main force of the invading horde making their move toward the town of Big Stump. They meant to awaken the scarecrow in the field to fight off the continuing depredations of the mad-scientist crows, they were committed. The enchanted knife was in their paws. They couldn't just leave it. But Big Stump had to be warned.

Tam piped up, ever the coward, but screwing up his courage. His voice got a little stronger with every word.

"Sirs, Madam... I may be no hero, no Waywatcher, but I have heart enough to try. These fast feet have saved me plenty. Time after time they've outpaced danger. Let me see if they can't save others, just this once."

If I never run another game my entire life, I can put away my dice content in knowing that I pulled off a Samwise Gamgee and it hit.

losers playing ttrpgs... losers playing ttrpgs save me...

mike is running a multi-year homebrew ttrpg campaign that is basically just a combination of any rulebook the losers can get their hands on + anything they come up with. i know it to be true. the campaign started as a call of cuthulu campaign but it is now a terrifying mix of call of cuthulu, dungeons & dragons, and cyberpunk with elements from a dozen other games including star wars: the roleplaying game, warhammer, harnmaster and somehow alma mater(??? idk how. but i know this happened). richie was like. "mike man, i love you forever, you're great at this. but why don't i have magic powers?" and he pointed at ben's collection of d&d rulebooks he'd been browsing through and he sounded so earnest and excited that mike knew in that moment he was going to sacrifice the integrity of his cool mystery campaign so richie could cast vicious mockery (99% sure vicious mockery didn't exist yet... don't quote me on that but it doesn't matter because the idea of richie using it constantly is hilarious)

they've all been playing the same characters for years and they keep convincing mike to add more stuff so they're all like super powerful and mike keeps having to come up with more and more powerful enemies.

mike's dice collection is so so so cool he has so many dice, and whenever he introduces a new important character he goes out and gets dice that fit their theme and it is such a moneysink but it's worth it because ooooh pretty dice

after four occasions where the losers decided to adopt a random npc mike hadn't planned anything for, mike has started planning every single npc out down to the specifics of their childhood education. he has endless character sheets hanging out in his room with characters he's created that populate his game world.

okay hanbrough agenda time: bill is the most oblivious guy in the entire world. i know this. (he is the guy who looks at brokeback mountain and goes "what do you mean it was gay? why can't men be friends anymore?" this is based on that one passage at the beginning of the book where he goes on one of those "why can't the curtains just be blue because they're fucking blue" rants lol. he does not know what media literacy is. to me) and mike is. increasingly frustrated and feels like he's losing his mind. he is like head in hands because he asked bill to go to prom with him and bill was like "yeah sure man! sounds great, you're my bestie forever!", and he has no idea what to do, because how is this man this dense, so he just starts having all of his NPCs fall head over heels for bill's character and flirt like madmen. it is painful for everyone involved. except bill. who still has no idea what is going on. that is a very unfortunate month.

mike and ben hang out a lot and ben helps mike brainstorm for the campaign so ben has all this insider knowledge and mike will just look at him before something insane happens in the campaign. they'll like make eye contact and ben will be like holy shit holy shit holy shit :0 and mike just drops some insane new lore. it's very special to me.

Shout-out to the NPC in our campaign that talked so confidently and enthusiastically about not understanding and not being interested in sex, relationships and families, that he sincerely had me (as a player) convinced that their whole (alien) species reproduced asexually.

Come to find out from the DM that no, they have sex and he has parents, he's just an absolute ace king.

Iconic.

This didn't happen very recently, but at some point within the past couple years I finally managed to see the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and man was that a huge perspective shift for me.

See, I've already seen pieces of ATLA before. When I was a kid, someone gushed to me about how good the show was and showed me a couple random episodes completely out of context. I hated it on sight, for pretty much all the same reasons I hated most other children's media at the time. If you had asked me then, I would have simply said that I thought the show was stupid. But after some time, I realized that no amount of "stupidity" explained the resentment and sheer anger that these shows, including ATLA, created in me at the time. The problem wasn't that the shows were "stupid," the problem was that the shows were fun.

Fun was not something I got to experience a lot of in my childhood. If I had to pick out a single, most defining aspect of it, I'd probably say either "anxiety" or "loneliness." For as long as I can remember, I knew that I had a lot of expectations that I needed to meet, and mistakes were not tolerated. You could say that I was a "high-performing, very well-behaved" child.

So, imagine, then, how I felt watching TV shows where the kids were silly, goofed off, and made bad choices that often resulted in nothing more than a slap on a wrist—all portrayed with a casual air of "These are children! This is what childhood is like!" Can you understand how infuriating that was to someone like me? To be shown, as far as I was concerned, a fake, fanciful lie? A lie that I was sure was even making my life worse, because it must be convincing children and adults that children are irresponsible fools, and if more adults knew that children could be responsible, and smart, and obedient . . . then maybe they would treat me better.

Over time, I grew less judgmental of ATLA and shows like it, but I was still pretty confident that it simply wasn't "for me."

The irony of this is not lost on me. Though I still haven't watched ATLA proper, from what I've heard about the show since, I was probably the exact kind of kid that many of the messages were intended for.

The problem?

Of the episodes I had seen, Zuko either was not in them, or played such a minor or out-of-context role that I learned nothing about him.

So, when I was in my mid-twenties, finally seeing Zuko in episode one as my roommate watched it in our shared living space, I was fascinated.

THAT was the character I had needed. THAT was the character I understood. Someone who had been molded into something unloveable. Someone who had no more power over it than wet clay has over the potter's hands. Someone who, deep down, knew this wasn't the right way to be, the way they wanted to be, but to be anything else would be to become destroyed. That was huge.

Because. Yeah. In retrospect, I was a fucking asshole as a kid, at least to other kids. But looking back, I also know that it was the only way I could be. In my isolation, it was the only thing I knew. And even then I knew that I was fucking up. I just didn't know how to change it. And once I finally got exposed to a wider world, saw that there were other possibilities, I did change. A lot. But it took a long time, and it was hard, because the same changes that would have won the approval of my peers, made me a better part of society, would have also destroyed me at home. The same things that made me unloveable also made me survive. I don't think I can explain the confusion I had for the longest time when interacting with other children. It went something like, "How can you be that way so openly, so happily, when I cannot? What is so different between you and I, that the same things that bring you joy could only ever cause me pain?" Even now, that unloveability still follows me. I once saw someone say that loneliness is self-fulfilling because others can sense the loneliness on you and are repelled by it, and I'm inclined to agree. It's no one else's fault. Of course they would be repelled by someone like me, who either clings so much that it's suffocating, or becomes so afraid of clinging that I become aloof and unreachable.

Anyway. Zuko is relatable, and seeing him has really recontextualized the entire series for me. It's kind of a relief, really. I know he gets a redemption arc, and I don't think a lot of characters I relate to in this way do. I've been holding on to those kinds of messages lately—the ones that tell me that I might have a future. Though, man, I wish I'd had an Uncle Iroh like he did, to hold my hand through everything and help me get to that better place in the end. Maybe things wouldn't be so hard now.

more jrwi tier lists..... they call to me

Turned @bratniadusza 's stabby boi Theo into a stamp!!! :DDD

When in doubt, redraw your dnd party as animal crossing characters (again) 🥳

Our party has started spelljammer so here's a quick draft of my brother's warlock. My description was "if the singer from The Cure was a space elf"

Character design commissions and links in pinned post~

Random but I was rambling about my oc earlier and wanted to get these thoughts outta my head.

I play a lot of ttrpgs. Like a lot. I tend to make my player character(s) a femme4butch lesbian bc part of me didn't fully see what femmes might see in a butch like me bc on some level, I used to think I was unworthy of love and the women I like wouldn't like me.

I also started doing it bc we had a toxic player (lowkey homo+transphobic but also implied to be an egg... long story that I don't wanna get into tbh) and I KNEW he'd be an ass if I made a character too loudly and obviously a lesbian and ofc he wouldn't be able to See a femme like I could.

But I wanted to be loud and obvious so I set my nose to the grindstone on femme presentation and feelings and attraction. I've been reading so much stuff on here from so many amazing femmes- stuff they've written and resources written by others that they've shared. Just when I thought I couldn't love femmes more. You prove me wrong.

I feel like being here and reading your thoughts and experiences and rp'ing f4b characters has given me a deeper and more profound understanding of femmes and I understand myself more too. I get it now, yanno? I don't see myself as gross or weird or unlovable anymore. I fun and sexy and cool!! We all are! Femmes n butches have such cool and unique presentation and experiences to gender and I feel like we can Always See each other. Like I know a Femme, capital F kinda Femme from a feminine person. Yanno? I don't really have a point to this post, I just love and appreciate femmes. You're genuine pillars in this community and I'd do anything for you.

Thanks for showing me how to love both me and you :3

I absolutely love my paradigm shift characters. By that I mean characters who, when put into a situation, can consistently not just respond effectively to that situation, but do so in a manner that turn its parameters on their head entirely.

For some this can be messing with the rules of reality, for others it can be introducing an element of chaos into play that puts everyone on equally uncertain footing, and for others still I can just be taking advantage of what's in front of them to stop their foes' plans in their tracks and force them to change their objectives significantly.

This comes up in combat a lot because I do a lot of combat, but it can also be a social situation thing, or even something on a larger scale that impacts the setting as a whole.

This I think ties in with the genre conventions of D&D and other RPGs that encourage similar stories through their design, as the players often end up a walking, collective paradigm shift. I don't think this is usually quite so intentional (it certainly wasn't for me individually until I realized the pattern recently) but when you do have a character or player in the group who does it on purpose, I think it feeds into the effects of the group as a whole and vice versa, creating a paradigm shift feedback loop[1] that results in wild shit happening.

The risk, of course, comes when the paradigm shifting happens at a cost to the collaborative nature of the game. I know I've in the past had to reign myself in or be reigned in by others, because my love for flipping the rules of what's happening on their head can at times trivialize any struggle. It's fine if this happens occasionally, but if it becomes too constant, it can make other players feel like their contributions matter less than those of the person who's constantly shifting the paradigm.

Let me give an example of a situation that could've exhibited this problem, but was prevented from doing so by solid encounter design. A few months ago in one of my games, the city we were in got assaulted by a horde of beats and monstrosities that had been driven mad and pushed in a specific direction by a magical plague. The first couple encounters weren't especially noteworthy, but the antepenultimate [2] one was largely nullified by my use of a well-placed spell. No problems there, everyone still got to contribute, all was fine and dandy.

The penultimate encounter came a little bit after, when a party member who'd been separated from the group came riding back to us at the head of a pride of lions they'd freed from the plague, while being chased by a collosal worm that could burrow through solid stone.

I had the clever idea to post up on a building in its path (with a party member who could teleport us out of its path if I failed because this character of mine likes to have redundancies) and, once it got within range, attempt to apply a fear effect, which would have left it unable to move closer to me. I made my attack, landed it, forced a saving throw, got really excited as it failed--oops! Legendary Resistance [3]! I was very melodramatic about this but I immediately understood the why of it and wasn't actually upset.

If I'd been able to apply the fear effect, I would have instantly nullified a major threat that had been seeded for an entire session, and had left another player with no recourse but to run away and try desperately to slow it down. I would've thus overshadowed them and also prevented the rest of the party from doing much at all besides wailing on an HP sponge until it died or ran away instead of us getting the really cool and dynamic combat we did end up getting (it got impaled on a 5 foot tall 60 foot diameter summoned tree and also swallowed our Druid. it's okay though I rescued them [4]).

Conversely, yesterday during a special dream arc, the half of our party that was present was being pursued by a Giant Red Dragon From Nowhere (tis the nature of dreams and random rolls). One of our number had done some clever stuff to get us a headstart, but the dragon had reached us again because Adult Reds go real fast.

Luckily, my character was mostly lucid, is a wielder of dream magic, and specializes in Inversion magic because of the whole paradigm shift obsession I have. As such, she proceeded to warp space around the dragon to Invert how directions worked, so as the dragon tried to move forward, its momentum carried it backward, far enough from us that we were able to hide in the alleyways of the city we were in and escape further trouble.

This situation had me successfully nullifying a major threat (this time one we couldn't hope to beat with only three people and had to run from) in one fell swoop, ending prematurely an encounter that might've multiple additional rounds for us to escape (and would've been Uh Bad if the dragon's fire breath had recharged).

However, this time, the encounter was not so important, had not been foreshadowed, did not involve an enemy that had been insurmountable for another player being potentially nullified by me, and had already involved the other characters contributing by the time I finished it.

All that [7] to say, as if I ever had an overarching point to this post to begin with, paradigm shifting to some extent needs to happen in moderation imo. I think nearly every game can benefit from someone who regularly flips the entire situation they're in on its head, but as in all things moderation is... a word I just used. I'm getting redundant which must be a sign I need to wrap things up.

Back to the point, if one person is nullifying encounters to regularly to the point that they overshadow everyone else, then there's a problem--just like how I wouldn't roll up to a game with my casual friends who enjoy light combat and pull out Grognard the Bugbear Ranger/Fighter who can output 24d6+5d8+30 damage on the first turn of combat at level 7.

I don't have a good way to end this and I really should eat. Bye [8]!

--

[1] Which feels like such a pretentious phrase* but listen. I'm in class presentations week, I'm running on four hours of sleep, and part of the thing that kept me up so late was incorporating into my project a paper I read about epistemological injustice in both testimonial and hermeneutic forms regarding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Y'all are lucky I'm not worse rn. Also tbh I'm just a pretentious bitch in general so why not own it.

[2] Jesus fucking christ

[3] On the off chance the post gets even moderately big I'm sure someone will divert into criticizing the design of Legendary Resistances as a "lol no ur thing just fails" method of preventing encounters from being nullified, which I think is entirely fair but in this case I feel the LR served its intended purpose well and bear no ill will toward it.

[4] They later died due from complications though**

[5] I need y'all to know I came onto Tumblr to write and post literally the first sentence of what this became. Now it's an hour and a half later and I haven't napped or eaten. Help me.

[6] After I put a readmore on this and break up some of these paragraphs jesus christ.

* I'm now near the end of this thing and wow nevermind "paradigm shift feedback loop" is honestly pretty tame.

** It's fine they got resurrected thanks to an NPC sacrificing himself.

Interrupting my own scrolling to realize how fucking grrrrrawrawrawr it is for absolute beloved asshole doctor nithral baines to have two names—a first and a last (HELL IT'S THREE BECAUSE HE'S NICKNAMED THE SCALPEL BY BARDS)—he didn't choose, only to be given the choice to take a (last) name that has become partially his by way of him choosing it the same way he chose to love the man who gave it to him. i CANNOT believe i only found a way to put my feelings about that interaction into words just now.

the fucking feeling of "i'll offer to let you share my surname if you'd make it more comfortable, but you don't have to" and him choosing to. him getting to choose his name. him choosing to share a name with someone he fucking loves fucking what

this is not even my character even though my character is involved and i am just absolutely fucking bananas fosters bonkers about this shit right now oh my fucking god