Critical Rolls

DnD, Lancer RPG, Tomb Kings, and Necrons

[charlesoberonn]

Turns out you can roll a 7 on a d6

but only once.

[theinsidiousdice]

[echoingkarma]

I remember this post! A lot of the comments were asking if the DM allowed the roll. It turned out they did! So a charmed party member got to deal extra damage to their own party ^^

[a-particular-j-name]

[optomisticgirl]

The moment Laura and Travis, in true married couple style, have a Realization at the same moment and give Marisha just the teeny, tiniest taste of what she put Liam through for years 😂

[your-turn-to-role]

hold on what are the words of my friend like a decade ago when they got that super popular post about dnd classes...

ah yes

[your-turn-to-role]

in the immortal words of the same friend from our very first dnd campaign, "i prepared for every scenario involving a dragon"

[manasaysay]

I love how Thjazi and Hal both support "The Cause" in different ways.

Thjazi is a revolutionary. He is putting his body on the line. He is actively investigating and taking steps to counteract whatever it is the Sundered Houses are doing. He is speaking out publicly, inspiring people to follow in his steps. But taking those actions means that there are things he cannot do. He is a known face and a known troublemaker. His interactions are automatically suspicious. Several groups have a motive to take him down. He can't have an established home base that people know about. His money is assumed to be dirty. He has to watch his back constantly. Every stranger could have a reason to knife him when he's not looking. Even some of the people he can work with want him dead (*cough*Bolaire*cough*).

Hal is just a nice guy, a law-abiding citizen; and that let's him be a pillar of the community in a very tangible way. He is able to bail people out of jail, feed people who need it, etc. By maintaining his position in society (what some more radically minded people might call "complacence" or even "collaborating"), Hal is able to do the things Thjazi can't. Hal made a deal for Misha to be under house arrest in his own home. He can do that because he is a trustworthy member of society, and everyone knows where he lives. He can have a friendly conversation with the sister of one of his employees: that's not suspicious. Hal is covered in a veil of plausible deniability, and that allows him a lot of freedom in a way his brother could never achieve.

Both things are necessary. You need people who will openly lead and speak and put their bodies on the line. But you also need people who can open their doors without fear and make connections to the people who aren't that brave, who can't afford to be brave.

You can't prove there's allegory in this.

[parkchanwoohoo]

[hungry-skeleton]

Ma'am this is the space restaurant we only serve bumpy fruit and severed tentacle

[xantchaslegacy]

[lordchairesq]

[homunculus-argument]

I like the idea of fantasy settings that initially look like the Standard Stereotypical Fantasy Setting, but when you look closer it's actually more grounded and realistic, but in a way that makes sense for why it looks like that at first glance.

I once had a thought of a fantasy setting where humans are the only race who are in any way distinctly sexually dimorphic, but then it occurred to me that it'd be funnier that they all have roughly the same level of different gendered traits, and can't really distinguish between them in any other one (unless they're very familiar with the other peoples, such as living in mixed cities).

Like elves are the only ones that aren't really distinct at all, male and female ones are both just as tall, the male elves do not have facial hair and the only time female ones have distinctly visible breasts is when they are nursing. Their beautiful, somewhat delicate androgyny easily reads as childlike to an unaccustomed human, giving them an impression of a race of eternally youthful, nigh-immortal creatures, though really they only live to about 100-120 years, while humans live roughly to their 70s or 80.

Elves also assume that humans are constantly reproducing and dying at the same rate as squirrels, since they assume that every human with distinct breasts is currently nursing, and the only explanation to how they could keep having babies nonstop and still maintain a stable population is that they're also dying nonstop.

An embarrassingly large number of humans genuinely do not believe that female dwarves or orcs exist. Female dwarves have beards just the same as male ones do, and in the dwarven societies where gender is expressed at all, the distinctions are in clothing detail too subtle for the untrained eye. A dwarf drinking party might prank a passed-out comrade by unbraiding her beard and re-braiding it into a men's beard style, leaving her waking up hungover and deeply confused about why the fuck she woke up dressed in drag.

The best way to tell male and female orcs apart is that the female ones are slightly larger than males. Orcs aren't matriarchal or matrilinear because of tradition, but because they usually choose their leaders on the grounds of who can beat the shit out of you, and the biggest and meanest one in the clan is just statistically more likely to be female.

[thishasalwaysbeenmyname]

Ok loving the idea that through some wild misconceptions and miscommunications the elves of this world are under the impression that humans live like 10-20 Maybe 30 years old and humans are under the impression that elves live close to a thousand because one time a human asked an elf how long they live and the elf replied something like "ten times as long as you humans do" and no one ever really fact checked.

Could also be that these elves have a comparatively short childhood like maybe only ten years or something so like obviously these short lived humans are only kids for like 2-3 years right? I mean they're not even that tall! And they're constantly popping them out must be having like dozens each year.

[fuck-im-tired]

“All she feels is searing jealously of humanity.”

I had to do a fanart of them. Enjoy 💗

-

-

I plan on posting an Occtis piece soon so follow to see that.

[waste-of-a-song]

I got the nemesis claw kill team for christmas and have been painting quite a bit, I did their colors based on how I color my chaos armor in space marine 2. I really like the night lords and listening to the omnibus a few months ago sent me on a path that is resulting in some of my favorite models I have ever painted. Someday I’d like to make each model into a specific character with a backstory and stuff for narrative campaigns.

Here is my current work in progress, I’m still struggling on what chapter to make the dude on his backpack, but I’m not very close to that yet so I’ll probably know when I get there.

Man I really haven’t posted my painting in a while

[amaryllis-sagitta]

What really highlights the debacle for me is the numerous mentions of Larian's CEO aspiring to go bigger and bigger after BG 3. Back at that game's peak popularity, it raised eyebrows, but Larian rode on their creative integrity spin. Alas, they ruined it as the major patches rolled out, by meddling with their own beloved piece of work to cave in to fan pressure, to make the female companions less mean and add more of very specific romanticized content at the cost of companions that remained neglected since 1.0 release.

As the new Divinity trailer came out, Swen Vincke reinforced that message about his increasing ambitions in regards with Larian's project scope. The new Divinity is meant to be larger and developed faster than BG 3. And he voiced his ambition in THAT article, where the discussion pivoted into the studio's use of genAI. So now, it's hard not to read that ambition as hubris that walks before the fall, ready to doom the human costs of production in a true tech CEO fashion. "Everyone's more or less ok with using it", we hear. But the fashion in which Larian claims to use genAI still facilitates the gap between high level experts and junior workers. Also, deeply incriminating stuff came out about their hiring process in the narrative departments, including unpaid labor hidden as recruitment tests, and rumors painting Vincke as... brand identity police of sorts.

(I'm referring to that thread on bsky)

It's, like, he didn't exactly have the vibe of someone who cares about creative feedback - and that was skillfully spun as assertiveness in an industry that normalizes corporate meddling with the stories. But all it took was a failure to read the room about generative AI. I think it's interesting (not in a cool way tho) that in the age where everyone wants to emphasize the collaborative nature of games, we still stumble upon project directors/ leads who take this... deeply personal ownership over TEAMWORK, and fall into the ruts of the Auteur(TM) mythology.

[derekscorner]

Since Thursday our politicians have been trying to rush the 'Kids Online Safety Act' (KOSA) and SCREEN acts alongside 15 other bills through committee in order to censor the internet while lying about it being for child safety. It was such laws that allowed the UK, Australia, and Europe to become the hellholes they are where youre arrested for mean posts.

Sadly, our same leaders are also trying to repeal Section 230 alongside these bills. What Section 230 does, in simple terms, is categorize stuff you make online as part of your freedom of speech.

If they aren't stopped they will strip that from you. Be wary.

[unshackledhorusshitpostbot]

Sorry for the non lancer post but if KOSA or the Screen ACT passes, if section 230 is repealed, it will be apocalyptic for tumblr and any site like it.

Bad Internet Bills

All of the bad internet bills. One website.

this site provides good resources to help you fight this if you're an american

[beleester]

@open-sketchbook made a Space Marine RPG, Oath of Moment, which has a bunch of cool ideas (and a few silly jokes), but I just want to highlight how it opens, because it's such a clever bit of storytelling:

This is the Space Marine quote, the one every 40k fan knows. This is the core of the Space Marine power fantasy - you are the best of the best, created by the Emperor himself to take on all the horrors of the galaxy and win.

And then Sketch adds on that one line of text at the end - "First recorded in the Testament of Saint Allendyne, 390/M38," and completely recontextualizes it. The Emperor never said this. This quote isn't describing what the Space Marines are, it's describing what the Imperium thinks they are, 8 millenia after the Emperor was reduced to a living corpse.

Which naturally raises the question - what are they really? If the classic image of Space Marines is a myth, how do they fail to live up to the ideal? That is the central question the game asks through its mechanics.

This is the very start of the rulebook, and it perfectly communicates what it's about with a single line of text. I am in awe.

[open-sketchbook]

<3

[minty--tealeaf]

jester in that

[anthurak]

‘sees a new fan/reactor comment that Nydas’s sword he’s seen holding in flashbacks this episode looks like Fjord’s sword and drawing a connection’

Oh, that’s funny you would think that, but there really isn’t anything to it.

‘remembers that there just so happened to be one of those eye relics in Nydas’s horde’

Wait.

‘ALSO remembers when Nydas showed up shirtless for the final battle of Calamity and Lou described him being covered in tattoos including a giant sea monster and Marisha and Travis jokingly chanted ‘ukotoa’…’

…MOTHERFUCKER!

[art-of-thomas-elliott]

Drukhari Codex cover I painted for Warhammer 40,000