My husband came back from PAX and now I have #diceaesthetic.
… now if only I had an actual D&D game to play.
This is why they don’t let me design games…
A PbtA skin called Bisexual Disaster.
The core stats are Cool (charm, leadership), Sexy (manipulation, dexterity), Bookish (intelligence, wisdom), Stacked (strength, stamina), and WTF? (weirdness).
Core playbooks include:
- The tiefling, emphasis on Cool and Sexy, moves are acrobatic and fire-based.
- The orc, emphasis on Bookish and Stacked, moves are about bashing things and communing with nature.
- The void horror, emphasis on Stacked and WTF?, moves all involve tentacles.
- The demon, emphasis on Sexy and Bookish, moves are about manipulation and contract law.
- The angel, emphasis on Bookish and Stacked, moves are about smiting the wicked and being a nebbish ingénue.
- The witch, emphasis on Bookish and WTF?, moves are the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none spellcasting variety.
- The dragon, emphasis on Cool and Stacked, moves are about having access to resources and being impervious to absolutely fucking everything.
- The fae, emphasis on Sexy and WTF?, moves are about mental manipulation and existing between states.
Core moves are when a character chooses to:
- ensure everybody wants them, rolling Sexy to… well, do as described
- know that everybody wants to be them, rolling Cool to inspire others to heroism and related selfless acts
- “ええと、あの…”, rolling Bookish to investigate or recall something about a plot point
- invoke cinnamon roll status, rolling Bookish to avoid confrontation or violence
- invoke sinnamon roll status, rolling Sexy to feign innocence while really being very naughty…
- be the representation we deserve, rolling Stacked to kick the righteous shit outta something and/or withstand unjust abuse/violence
- invoke binvisibility, rolling Sexy to avoid detection
- create a disaster, rolling WTF? to create effects not normally permitted by the laws of nature, narrative causality, et al.
Gameplay sessions all involve resolving an A plot and a B plot.
- The B plot is some kind of villain-of-the-week that needs to be discovered and defeated.
- The A plot involves at number of NPCs equaling or exceeding the number of players, and is resolved by each player character engaging in some form of romantic and/or sexual encounter with an NPC of their choice.
Totally Legit Game Idea © me 5eva Kickstarter coming soon I swear…
Narrative will.
The reason that letting the audience choose its own story keeps failing when the entertainment industry tries it is that it’s a bad idea. It’s the author’s job to write the story. They can then choose a way to convey that story that gives the reader freedom in how they experience it. But if the story itself is merely a loose collection of different options, each in a different genre and with a completely different tone, then what they’ve created isn’t a coherent work, but a self-indulgent mess.
Abigail Nussbaum on story.
This is from a really, really good comparative look between Black Mirror‘s “Bandersnatch” and the “walking simulator” video game genre which, among other things, really nails why I can’t fucking stand Black Mirror‘s smug, lukewarm, late-to-the-fucking-party takes on things. Also Firewatch was a fantastic game, so was Gone Home, and while I didn’t love Night in the Woods I can see why people do.
Also related thought: the tension in tabletop RPGs between “the GM designs the game and the players experience it” versus “the players make-up the game and the GM facilitates” it. I’ve mentioned before I am… not particularly a fan of the latter approach and, again, I think this article well-articulates why.
Elliot.
Version two of this guy, a.k.a. Elliot, redrawn now I’m a bit more used to Clip Studio. Also without using Cheap Hair Trixx™ to hide the fact that, a) drawing ram horns is hard, and b) drawing ram horns coming out of the side of a “human’s”1 head is even harder.
Elliot is our game sept’s resident misanthrope and hacker.2 His hobbies are: telling the player characters’ they’re dumbasses; being extremely loyal to Lex, the son and heir-apparent to the sept’s current leader; secretly writing dirty fanfic; and keeping hundreds of cockroaches as pets in his trailer. If he has to go out in human public, he paints his horns in candycorn stripes and pretends he’s a Homestuck cosplayer.
Not pictured in this version’s laziness: Elliot’s tattoos of Cockroach and the Prophecy of the Phoenix.
- Technically a metis Garou in homid form. Also Yes I Know, but… welcome to 1990s-era WoD game rules, I guess. [↩]
- Hence the name; pretty much all the NPCs are named after TV show characters. [↩]
Grid.
Today in “random tools for DnD”… a website to make your own grid paper. Multiple different shapes and sizes available!
For the Humanity!
Look I have so many reservations about Bloodlines 21 but in this one thing, at least, I am content: they’re bringing back… THE DANCE.
- I still pre-ordered it, though. [↩]
New books for June 2019!
New books! Mostly my haul from Continuum, plus one Kickstarter reward, and one book from Japan. Titles include:
- Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish
- Alison Evans, Highway Bodies
- Marlee Jane Ward, Welcome to Orphancorp
- J.S. Breukelaar, Aletheia
- Amanda Bridgeman, The Subjugate
- the remaining B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth collected volumes
- the Over the Edge core rulebook
- a touristy artbook of demon and ghost ukiyo-e works I bought from a museum in Harajuku.
Also, if you squint, in the top left of the image you can see the box of Werewolf: the Apocalypse character sheets from the game we haven’t played for like a year because half the players decided to have a baby. Pfft.
Monstrous paints.
One day, I will finish a painting. TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY!
This is, of course, the slightly more progressed version of this WiP, done while at Continuum 15. It’s mostly me trying to learn to use Clip Studio on my iPad, and… ki-ii-inda getting into a groove for it? I am actually pretty happy how the overpaint is turning out, I just… wish it didn’t take me like five hundred hours to get to that point which… ugh. Go figure.
Also, I need to fix those drips. Yeah. Those ones. Also, lol what even are light sources?
Jeeze. This is why I never finish anything. Cannot. Unsee…
Homebrewery.
Do you love Markdown? Do you love DnD? Do you love making homebrew content for DnD and writing about it in Markdown and having an app spit it out looking like it’s come straight from the pages of an official book? Yes? Awesome. The Homebrewery has you covered!