end of march is crazy for writing like i have a 1.5k essay im doing today and tomorrow, a 2k word essay im doing wednesday and a 1k word research proposal im doing friday. and in the remaining week of the month i am WILLINGLY going to finish taob (~10k OPTIMISTICALLY) and make a solid start on tams (~5k-10k depending on how well writing goes). like yes girl write around 20k words worth of MULTIPLE PROJECTS in a handful of days there is no way this can end badly at all

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.

Pikku-Pekka ("tiny Pekka"), my demon child rp oc who died by burning to death and now haunts and tricks people :) oh and he awakens dead gods :)

had an incredibly fun game of dnd today. there was a city without stars, surrounded by a seemingly infinite chasm from which no one returns. and our party, searching for answers about the world (this cannot be all there is, surely? earthquakes are more frequent than ever and the sky keeps going pitch black. is this the end of times?) ends up... discovering a FUCKING MECHA. WHICH WE PILOTED. TO DEFEAT A KAIJU. TO THAT ONE PROMARE SONG

out-of-context quotes from our last dnd session:

"stoned at the mining camp" (my current nickname in the party discord)

"the clucklefucks" (my most recent contribution to our quotes channel)

GOD I hope these sugar cookies turn out good they smell DIVINE

trying to branch out! trying to connect with others! I am not scared!

tabletops are fun :)

my desire to make more dnd characters vs the fact that I’m in no campaigns and don’t know when or if I’ll be in a campaign are fighting

Viewed a house yesterday that was kinda shitty but the people who already live there were really cool, I said I needed to think about it and I'd contact them later to tell them, I realised I wanted the room yesterday evening, sent them a message, they didn't answer, I sent them another one a little after noon, they're still not answering, it's been almost 30 minutes, and I am feeling both insecure and sad

.

just got back from dnd and HOOOLYYY SHITTT

i think we’ve talked about this before, but are there any hatofans out there who also like dnd and want to brainstorm worldbuilding for either a bbl-verse campaign or absolute zero campaign with me ;) 

for a bbl-verse campaign, pcs could be different students/teachers/hawk or dove party members. in order to not overlap with the actual bbl plot too much, the campaign could take place before bbl (like during the era when nageki is alive and stuck at st pigeonations). or maybe something to do with hawk/dove party conflict? or maybe to do something with the bird/human war?? or post-bbl? the possibilities are endless! 

oh and an absolute zero campaign would be absolutely insane if it could be some sort of parallel world jumping back and forth between fantasy and the real world. some anghel shit right there y’know?  

anyways i am just extremely invested in the idea of a hbf themed dnd campaign and i will now be designing a hbf oc for fun lol 

Akuma's new outfit color scheme since I revamped their backstory. i've been into lovecraft stuff again lately and i realized the outer gods and such just. Exist in pathfinder canon, I decided to give them one as a patron as a treat (for me, not for them)

so their new vague backstory is that they were stolen as a baby and raised in a cult (to someone other than their patron, I didn't decide who) and when they were an adult, they were sacrificed. in some cotl vibes they were resurrected by their patron (they don't know what it is, exactly) and given magic and some sort of goal (it's all very vague bc this is like. a oneshot, so it doesn't matter. and if it turns into a game, then the gm and i can hash out the details). they killed the cultists who had sacrificed them and fled into the wider world which they know absolutely nothing about, shortly after that getting their familiar who is like the only one they trust (which is probably a mistake, considering who it was a gift from)

kitsune tiefling witch of the night, and their patron is nyarlathotep

[placid smile of someone who is seconds away from going apeshit with Big Feelings] my monster of the week game has only two episodes left before it's over

I'm fine I'm normal about this

Now all we need is a REALLY big trenchcoat