it is a good day to not know anything about smps

[cw, mentions of noncon, p*dophilia]

saw a rlly good post that i've been consistently thinking about regarding how you really cannot, and probably should not, be up in arms over properly tagged/gated off fan content if it happens to have dark themes.

and its like... the argument of "you can't do X unless you're Y" is really shitty because you have no idea what the other person has been through! and they shouldn't have to lay out all of their experiences and personal credentials for a fucking internet mob that was mad they wrote m/m smut or noncon or abuse or whatever else they've decided is a moral failing in the space of fiction.

am I allowed to write a character that self harms? you don't know if I've dealt with that, and I shouldn't have to tell you in order for you not to stake me for it. What about characters that experience homophobia? I'm a lesbian, but I see a lot of people get really up in arms if fantasy has homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, ableism, etc. in it. When often times, especially when it's not a big majorly published work but instead made by an individual artist - they HAVE experienced those things. And, again, I don't think it's worth having to re-traumatize victims 'just in case' the person writing something you don't like hasn't dealt with those specific issues.

the whole 'fiction impacts reality' concept really only works with mainstream media that can be widely and easily distributed to the rest of society. There's a difference between a super famous musician like Sia making a blockbuster movie that portrays autism incorrectly and is literally partnered with autism speaks (a hate group)...and some poor bitch on AO3 who wrote a fanfic with r*pe in it. Guess which one has a significantly smaller audience, isn't profiting millions off it, and usually is locked away behind tags and content warnings and 18+ only account barriers? Not the fucking shitty autism movie.

I think there's definitely an argument to be made for making sure people tag their content accordingly across the whole internet at large, and rightfully being upset if an actual legal line is being crossed, or it's something upsetting that anyone can stumble across without having the option to refuse it. Hell there are websites like that for mainstream media like does the dog die (which is good if you're like me and love watching horror content but have triggers!) But I think purposefully shit-stirring because you don't like the content itself isn't appropriate. You have triggers? I do too! Don't interact with it! Block and walk away! Use filtering extensions!

The internet is a LOT more properly sectioned off in terms of NSFW content today than it was when us 20/30-somethings were growing up online. I promise for most of this shit you're not being a beacon of purity and moral righteousness but are intentionally ruining someone's day/reputation/life over a fucking fanfic that does not matter in any way. I know sensitive subject matter can be hard to deal with, but nowadays there literally are so many tools at your disposal. Eventually exposing yourself to it over and over again DOES become your fault. The block button exists. Use it!

** do NOT derail this trying to soapbox about 'think of the children' or vague claims of 'cp'. People have turned whats supposed to be caring about the wellbeing of children into an ignorant whirlwind of 'gotchya' terminology about someone drawing aged up anime characters or age differences between a 21 year old and a 30 year old. aka shit that is NOT p*dophilia. Also if you try to soapbox about the evils of fujoshi's i'm going to spit on you.

its been a busy fuckin week for this mod my ladz!!! i thought i would just give an end of week run down how everything is going, everything added so far and my to do list! also discord!!! and patreon!!! but i’ll talk abt that after this!! a general run down if u dnt know what this wip mod is:

The Royalty Mod gives your sims the opportunity to being the reigning Monarch of your game. They have the chance to become a Beloved Ruler or a Despised Tyrant (and will be treated as such!) They will be completely in control of a custom tax system, will the be benevolent and keep the taxes low or be greedy and fill their coffers with their subject’s simoleans? Be careful though, your actions will affect your citizens and their views of you! Your Monarch will be the most important piece of the puzzle, as they will be able to give titles to family and friends... or even a random street vendor. Having your Monarch bestow titles such as Crown Royals, Royal Partners, Servants, Court Wizards and more, keeps you out of CAS and IN your game! No more stopping and starting your gameplay!

A general overview of everything included so far:

Monarch: - A custom Heir system: Your Monarch can choose anyone bestowed with the title of Crown Royal or Royal Partner to become the next in line to the throne! And if they decide they made a mistake, the Heir can be disowned :((( sad lyfe As soon as the Monarch passes away, the Heir will automatically claim the throne! - If your Monarch dies before they get a chance to name an heir, then any Crown Royal or Royal Partner can vie for the throne. Whoever the people choose (gets to reputation level 6 - very good) first, will become the next Monarch! - Teens and up can become the Monarch, (lookin at u edward the 6th) - Custom tax system! Raise taxes to get more money instantly and in your weekly tax collection, but incur the ire of your subjects! Lower taxes and you will lose money and earn less each week but your subjects will love you! - Your Monarch will draw a crowd wherever they go! Even with no fame points they’ll attract a mass of adoring onlookers. (But no paparazzi for my historical players) - Make world-wide decrees - Listen to your subjects pressing concerns by telling your Trusted Advisor that you will hold a hearing, get that gud gud karma!! - Make anyone a Crown Royal! - Make the land celebrate your own birthday with a new Monarch’s Birthday tradition, with custom goals to be met! - Don’t walk like the rest of these peasants, make sure to enable your royal stride to royally stand out from the crowd. Not enough? Enable your regal glow to really drive home that you’re better than everyone else! - Royal greetings! - Allow your subjects to commence Sunday trading on a lot with the Market lot trait! Townies will come and man the stalls every sunday 9-3 and the royal family can peruse and purchase to their hearts content! -probably more that im forgetting!!!

Heirs, Crown Royals & Royal Partners: - Titles are bestowed by the monarch, crown royals & heirs can be titled at birth and Royal Partners can be titled after marriage! - Both can be named as Heir, and both can vie for the throne if the Monarch dies unexpectedly! - Your Monarch can make anyone a Crown Royal, so if you gameplayed that your Monarch adopted a poor orphan kid, then they can have a shot at the throne too! - All have multiple different social and skill modifiers, so they can make new friends fast and be better at everything than them! - Also all have their own socials - ALSO all can be completely banished from the royal family - u can defo marry into the royal family if u wanted, and make ur peasant family the next gen of royals ;))) - loads more but im so tired

Trusted Advisor: - Your Monarch will choose their trusted advisor! they advice! u on stuff! so choose wisely! - everything about taxes, beginning situations, domestic affair (and planning to add LOADS more) goes thru ur advisor, just like it does in real life and by real life i mean i think i just made that up - way more 2 come bros

- brand spankin new custom animations!!!!!!!!!!

Planned to Add (p much the same as last post): - unlockable interactions based on skills such as charisma - bad monarch reputation and tyrant trait to have the possibility of triggering a revolt??? - Custom situations to trigger weekly events such as royal hearings, banquets ect. - custom situations to trigger a bunch of npc servants (big maybe) - Mass Excitement over royal babies - Mass Mourning over passed over Monarchs - Mass Excitement over new Monarch - Options for crown royals to steal the throne - Sentence to death - Way more custom socials - looking into craftables - Perhaps more of a focus on the working class - more magicky type interactions for court wizards - just like. so much more. but its 1:30am and my brain has stopped working

ok now i wrote this out it rlly doesn’t look like a lot but i have so many gatdamn plans for shit i still gotta add. plus i will probably end up making hair and a few clothes and objects too. also omg guys im totally gonna make one of those fancy fuckin trailers for youtube :))))))))))) also was i on fiverr lookin at voice actors to narrate it...? maybe bitch

anyway i said i would talk abt patreon so here it is!!!

first things first, let me just say that no, i absolutely do not think i am entitled to a single cent of anyone’s money!!! I would/will still put 110% into this mod and my future mods because I absolutely love doing this. At the moment I’m currently working on this mod about 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week (animations bruh), which is kinda insane. but I want this to be everything everyone’s wanted from EA for years.

I made a Patreon for those who would like to support me. If you do decide to become a Patron I am endlessly thankful for that, not just the monetary value of it but the fact that you believe in me enough to do that.

Every cent of any pledge goes towards my saving fund for my course next year, which for those of who don’t know, I’m currently a first year Game Design student!!! In complete clarity, I’m looking at a $15,000 loan atm, so literally anything helps if u do decide to pledge!

Tiers start at $1 and all tiers have access to a private patrons channel in my discord! u can go read what u get with the tiers over on my page! I’ve offered as much as I can, but since im super not down with exclusives, pls let me know if u think there’s anythin more i can offer u guys!!!

Tier 2 does include a one week early access to my content. I feel like this is the most I’m comfortable offering, and I will always stick to or under EA’s rules when it comes to Patreon.

Tier 2 also offers first picks for Beta Testing, but depending on how many (if any) tier 2 patrons I get, it may work on a rotational system as I still want to include people from tumblr in the beta testing. I don’t want anyone who can’t afford patreon to feel left out, so I would still offer some beta testing spots here and it’ll be first come first served like normal! i don’t want it to feel like i’m gatekeeping my cc. i hope this is okay with you guys! For those who aren’t in a place where they can become a patron, but still want to stay included in everything related to this mod, I now have a Discord Server that anyone can join! speaking of >>>>

we have a discord ladzzzz!!!!!!!!!

If u wanna stay up to date on everything I’m doing regarding the mod, or u have a question or suggestion, or there's something wrong with one of my mods that u need fixed, or tbh if u just wanna hang out with some cool dudeeees n chill n chat n have a jolly time then com join the discord!!!!!!!!

i’m going to be posting updates and screenshots of the mod process much more frequently there (probs like a few times a day tbh lmao) and it’s much easier to get a hold of me there if u have any suggestions.

and tbh we just gonna have a chill time and i want a metric fuckton of memes and gifs. if that doesn’t sway u, we have a whole channel dedicated to only pics of guy fieri. u will be banned if u post anything else there. u were warned.

ok god im so sorry this is literally 10 years long but i just had a lOT to say but like, mods goin good lads. i just want to make something that gives the game more play ability and keeps u in game and out of CAS. its excitin stuff. thanks for listenin.

                              PATREON | DISCORD SEVER

                    see all royalty mod updates on my tumblr here

also im v sorry if u join the discord like right after this is posted bc i am most definately fuckin asleeeeeeep

Spell Components & You, Pt. 1

I got to thinking about my comment about material/focus components in the Animator homebrew Sorcerous Origin and thought, “Hey! This can be a nifty guide!” It’s going to be fairly bare-bones, though, as I want it to translate between editions.

There are five components a Sorcerer needs to worry about: Verbal, Somatic, Material, Focus, and XP. (The only other one that exists, to my knowledge, is Divine Focus [{un}holy symbol]. There might be an archetype somewhere which requires it. Eh.) If you were to flip M and F, these would be in order best to worst. 5e combines M and F for a minor/no reason (see below). XP only existed in 3.0 and 3.5 (barring some aberration in a later edition). Generally speaking, if you can avoid having an extra component, you should: components are ways for enemies to stop your casting without having dispel magic, counterspells, or antimagic field ready. These exist also for flavor, but if they were only flavor all of them (well, except XP) would be entirely optional. All of that said, I don’t recommend using metamagic to negate verbal and somatic components unless the situation demands it, as almost all spells require those two components.

Verbal

Incantations. Words/songs of power are so intimately associated with magic that a good portion of our words for magic refer to singing (charm, enchantment, evocation/invocation, possibly glamour, grimoire, spell, etc.); Bardic Music is simultaneously the epitome of this (being a mechanic that actually deals with how speech works) and redundant.

Contrary to a lot of fiction (YuYu Hakusho is the first to come to mind, but there are others) but aligning with others, no target needs to be able to hear your verbal components for them to work -- you just have to pronounce them correctly. (This implies that you’re invoking the magic, though earlier editions did specify that no one was quite sure why the words worked, just that they had to be exact.)

Counteracting verbal components is the second most difficult of the five (after XP), but is also the most widely known course to take -- to the point that the spell silence has become the term most often seen in other games for status effects that prevent casting, even if they don’t literally interrupt sound. The go-to methods are deafening the caster, spells like silence which prevent the caster from speaking at all, and gags. Obviously, gagging is fairly difficult (you have to apprehend the caster first), but deafening and silencing casters through other means are almost always magical effects anyway.

Verbal components are also the easiest to get rid of (besides Somatic ones): 3.x has the Silent Spell metamagic feat (+1 level), 5e combines that with 3.x’s Still Spell at a reduced cost, and there are references here and there to allowing deaf/hard-of-hearing casters to ignore this penalty.

Somatic

Gestures. “Somatic” means “having to do with the body;” you’d think TSR or WotC could have come up with a better word for these, but whatever. Somatic components are the reason used to justify armor interfering with arcane magic. Given that you can wear gauntlets as weapons in 3.x without incurring the penalty and almost all types of armor interfere with casting regardless of whether or not they include gauntlets (and regardless of the edition), it would seem that you need a very good range of motion with your arms at a decent speed in order to cast spells with somatic components.

In both 3.x and 5e, you must have at least one hand free in order to cast a spell. This is probably to skirt around action economy for dropping, stowing, and picking up items/weapons, specifically so that you can hold a staff and cast. There are a number of options in 3.x for using a weapon (which could be a staff) to cast your somatic components, but this is mainly for eldritch knight types who want to dual-wield.

Anything that restrains a caster can justify interfering or negating spells with somatic components. This is why grappling a caster is a common tactic (besides Strength being a stereotypical dump stat).

Material and Focus

3.x distinguished between Material and Focus components in definition: spells always consume any material components they specify but never any focus components. However, this caused some wonkiness in gameplay: they get used similarly (the rules don’t even specify if you need to hold them, let alone if you can hold them in the same hand doing your gestures), but rules which apply to one don’t often apply to the other.

For example, the Eschew Materials feat (3.x, 3.P) lets you ignore any material components costing 1 gp. or less. In theory, this means you wouldn’t need to buy a spell component pouch (or spend money on upkeep for one if your DM were to go that route). In practice, it doesn’t also apply to foci, which means either you need to buy a spell component pouch, ask your DM for an exception, or avoid certain spells (there are several and many are desirable).

5e combined the two into a single mechanic and instead specified in each spell description whether or not the component got consumed. That’s slightly better; I think it would have been easier to include Focus components under Spellcasting: Casting a Spell -- Components and simply state that any rule that governs Material components also applies to Foci, but that they aren’t used up in the casting process. That would leave a simple M & F notation rather than redundant verbiage. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

In general, a focus is better than a material component because you don’t have to worry about replacing it. Thus, if you were playing something by strict RAW and didn’t have access to 5e’s (glorious) addition of spellcasting foci (which should have been in the game from OD&D), you could fill a spell component pouch with your foci and (likely) never have to spend any money on upkeep. (Perhaps every time you learned a new spell with a focus.)

That’s not much of a consolation. Any effect which can steal from you can disable spells with either component. Any effect which stops a spell with a somatic component also stops one with a material or focus component. The Animator Sorcerous Origin sidestepped both of these in that the focus could also be environmental, but since that requires you to be around something specific for each of your spells, it’s not a consolation prize.

The worst aspect of these sorts of components is that many are costly -- often hundreds or thousands of gp. worth of gems and precious metals, frequently shattered or ground into dust.

Experience

As far as I am aware, Pathfinder got rid of XP costs in spells and 5e followed suit. I could be wrong on the latter, but Pathfinder was pretty strict about getting rid of XP costs in magic (it was a cornerstone of magic item creation in 3.0 and 3.5). 3.5 didn’t have many core spells with XP costs (14: atonement, awaken, commune, gate, limited wish/miracle/wish, permanency, the planar ally series, greater restoration, simulacrum, and vision), but there were others scattered hither and yon.

I note this component at all for two reasons: first, for anyone converting between 3.5 and Pathfinder to pay attention to these when converting, and second, to point out that XP costs (while horrible) had the advantage of being uncounterable (no one and nothing could prevent you from using the component as a way of interrupting the spell). You could use that to build a new casting method, but why would you?

Other Notes

The main combat advantage psionics has had over arcane magic in most editions (other than being overpowered due to an idiotic lack of transparency) is that powers usually didn’t require components (though they did have tells). The psychic magic system of Pathfinder‘s Occult Adventures supplement does have thought and emotion components, but as these are entirely mental all they do is give alternatives to the silence spell as ways to stop casters.

I will have a part two, which will be entirely about why spells specify material components and which spells to think about regarding material/focus costs.