if im being honest and allowing myself to vent a bit about it ... another red flag was when the DM went 'wow i love the detail of your backstory but idk what i can do with it tho ):'

Men are not a new sensation // I've done pretty well I think // But this half-pint imitation put me on the blink // I'm wild again, beguiled again // A simpering, whimpering child again // Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I

tbh i think that even unwinnable fights should be winnable. some of the BEST fights i've ever run as a dm were ones i built kill the players (in a fun way. I had some cutscenes prepped so even the loss would be a different flavour of win)- but then they were clever bastards and managed to either win the fights or pull themselves out of trouble. I think it's perfectly fine to plan for a fight that players aren't supposed to win, but you need to let them. if they can't win, they can't lose, and the meaning of that encounter is diminished. do that too many times, and they stop trusting you to give them roleplay prompts and start expecting to sit there waiting while you drive the story for them.

but if they can win... if there is always the chance to win, no matter how impossible the odds, then they ALWAYS have hope. they always get invested. they feel the big emotions of success or the big emotions of failure, and you fucking Win as a dm/roleplay prompter/lead bastard.

observations while im continuing my first DM reread after the talon brain invasion of september 2023

me when i remember i have free will and can make a dungeon meshi oc

never let me cook again

Hmm I apologize again for the rant !

It is not the first time I am doing it. I might forgot to put "please don't tag it as ship" under my drawing of tighnari cyno. Please, do not !

I love them as best friend, I love them as brother/found family, I don't mind the queerplatonic relationship at all

But their romantic side make me pretty uncomfortable. No hate ! It is my own taste.

Shippers are always welcomed and I am so glad you like my content 💕 but all my art concerning them (unless I tag the ship) are purely platonic. I just ask for some respect of my taste and not reblog my art with the ship tag.

I don't want to block, because I am genuinely glad you enjoy my work and as a young artist, it means a lot for me. Thank you so much 🙇 !! But as a human, I can't deny how uneasy it makes me feel.

Thank you for understanding !

bunch of au stuff (except that one page of them in their usual clothes lol)

Do you have a price idea for the b-grades?

Buhhh 5$ + shipping probably?

Also I am adding a little something extra to all the people who got the preorders! Which I wont be adding to the b-grade orders, and that would also explain the lower price-

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

I was wondering if I could write about your gay hallmark characters, but not as continuing the story (I wouldn't do that. It would be rude as fuck) but as fanfiction for your fanfiction.

hi! thank you for asking first, i really really appreciate it! just a clarification, my piece isn't fanfiction--100% original fiction!--but yeah, go for it, write all you want, i'd just rather you didn't post it. if you really want to, please just make sure to tag & credit me so ppl dont confuse it with canon 😊 thank you!

not me coming up with an entire political atmosphere in the ghost zone for a goddamn haha funny jason/danny fic. i have legit spent 6 hours today on research alone for this bullshit. wtf.

speaking of which if anyone has ideas for some cool ghosts plz let me know :) i will absolutely give credit, cause there's only so many death gods/symbols of death a man can cram into a fic before it starts to sound like a research paper.

i'm already 3k words in and i haven't even gotten to the character that's going to be explaining the politics to danny, brain wHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS--

but yeah if you want to read a snazzy fic that's gonna be one hell of a slowburn, delves into the concepts of what dead people politics would look like, has danny become a sexy heartthrob of a thief, has jason actually get the therapy he needs + the emotional support from his family he riGHTFULLY DESERVES, and ofc (eventual) cute domestic fluff after a wild rollercoaster of enemies to friends to lovers then you should check out my fic <3

(there's only one chapter out but chapter two should be done in like a week or so)

tumblr rw community i turn to you for help does anyone know how to make a custom expedition icon for a modded-in slugcat? i couldn't find anything on it in the slugbase articles i read :[

I hate to spam y'all, but my doctor's appointment is Monday the 13th. I've got a gig on Saturday that will pay $175 but I won't get my paycheck until the 15th so I'm still about $300 short.

Any size donation gets you custom, exclusive content during all of March.

Kink and fetish friendly as always

Ca$happ

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Enjoy this sexy pic as my dash tax

*me, curled up and sobbing on the floor* No don't use the character backgrounds- use the npc creation page! Use the NPC creation page!!!! it'll give you actual things to roleplay with- mannerisms! interactions! your appearance!! what random bit of knowledge does your pc know? what's they're non-combat talent?? don't start deep, start shallow! Please you can use the backgrounds too afterwards but start on the NPC creation page please pLEASE!!!!! *crying*

Oof. Currently learning the hard way that safety tools in d&d are essential, no matter the premise, tone, or genre of the campaign and no matter who you're playing with.

more dnd and adjacent media should be run and written by people who think dwarves and elves are boring but care very sincerely about halflings and gnomes