bobbananaville

bob he/him 28. i'm not very familiar with social media in general ngl so sorry if i do not tumblr correctly. avatar by sariprawita

[lumidotexe]

Emergency Commissions!!

COMMISSIONS INFO/SHEET HERE

Going through a rough financial dip, and I need to pay off personal medical bills.

Please take a look at my commissions sheet if you're interested, and if you can’t commission, REBLOGGING AND SHARING helps just as much!

Even Rainfall has Shadows Masterpost has temporarily been moved to here.

[bobbananaville]

Thank you so much @lumidotexe for the art! I don't really have an essay-thing this time, this is just another commissioned image of my Monster of the Week Snoop Avery, as they look out for monsters in the woods!

The specific scene depicted is not _exactly_ as it was in the game I played - mostly because it was a while ago - but I think it really captures the _feel_ of what it was like during the session! Isolated in the woods, we _knew_ we were being watched but didn't know where from. And Avery was _determined_ to get a photograph!

[bintro]

[funnyjokespuns]

I didnt mean to reblog this here but yknow. Why not. It can be isat

[bobbananaville]

Bob's July 16 2025 Post

i have _no_ idea what i'm doing but here's a post.

Two things: 1: I'm trying to start up a new Animon Story campaign! Managed to get three players, so here's hoping I can do the game justice. Not many details though.

2: Our Monster of the Week campaign is in series 2, Electric Boogaloo, in an alternate universe to the original! This time I'm playing as Avery, a version of Wren's sibling who survived the Bigfoot attack! Thank you @lumidotexe for the wonderful art!

(EDIT: I have since learned how to add the 'keep reading' button so i'm adding that here, since it's a big post. Long post afterwards)

I played Wren as a kind of bitter - but ultimately protective and empathetic - person. I decided this time to keep that empathy, but swing the opposite direction - Avery is a very excitable little gremlin who doesn't really understand how dangerous the world they're stepping into is. Heck, they think the supernatural is _awesome_ - a sasquatch saved their life when they were a kid!

They're a reporter for the Seratoga Moon, a newspaper of ill repute that mostly has stories about cryptid conspiracy theories and the like. In session one (we've only had one session), a Naiad lashed out because their fountain was left to rot and decay, so Avery (plus the other hunters) resolved to work together to get the people of the city to care, pick up litter, et cetera. It was great! I think when I played Wren there was maybe one session where we spared the monster of the week, so it's kind of a novel feeling.

[insertdisc5]

You have a case to solve, your memories reset each day, and two mysterious guides are vying for your attention– who will you decide to remember, and who will you decide to push aside…?

THE TRAILER FOR MY NEXT GAME IS FINALLY OUT...!!!! Please welcome Truth Scrapper ( @truthscrapper ), which you can WISHLIST right NOW!!!! 📚👒👭

[oh-so-youre-a-nerd]

I'm looking for a couple people to pick their brains about either murder mystery, Fantasy books or visual novels in general! I wanna know what you hate and love etc.

Dm here or message me on discord (ascindio#5756) to feel super interesting and important!

[bobbananaville]

I posted this in a reply to one of your other messages but fuck it, it makes more sense as a full reblog/response

I feel like at least based on my experience, there's three different kinds of visual novels (or interactive fiction in general), with different end goals. These aren't all mutually exclusive, but VNs tend to prioritize different goals. (This is also divorced from genre - these can all be romance, or horror, or puzzle game, whatever)

There's the 'self-expression' style of visual novel - think Arcade Spirits, Our Life, etc. The choices available are more for your ability to say "This is me/my character, they are a unique and special snowflake". The purpose of playing is to get you to think about how you/your character to react. This is my jam.

Secondly, there's "Choices Matter" style of visual novel - I'm thinking of Scarlet Hollow here as the best example of this - so many little things could change based on little choices, not even counting the big end-of-episode ones. A lot of games in the "Self-Expression" bucket also pursue this goal, but one is not prerequisite of another - actually, this is better represented by CRPGs like Fallout or Disco Elysium. The idea behind this is you want to know that your actions affected the world around you - that if you hadn't made the decisions you'd made, the world would be a different place. It's the sort of game where your first playthrough feels like uniquely 'yours'. You know the Fallout-style ending slide show? If you're expecting one at the end, it's one of those. This is also my jam.

Thirdly, there's 'exploration' style visual novels. These ones don't require choices, though they can be present - rather, the goal of this visual novel is to explore something - usually who a character is, be it the love interest(s) or the player character or something else (though this is genre-dependent - a mystery VN is more about exploring the mystery). These are, if not kinetic, usually defined by specific 'routes' (think Fate Stay Night, or Slay the Princess), where the intent is that a completionist might see multiple routes to get the full picture - though these can also be kinetic novels. The point is that player freedom isn't the goal - the goal is experiencing the story, learning about the characters, etc., and the choices are more about 'what do you want to read _now_' than 'what would you/your character do' or 'what's the best decision to make'. This is also also my jam, but less so than the other two.

Most visual novels I feel are 'exploration' style. 'Self-Expression' tends to be rare - most visual novels have a fixed character protagonist, or the protagonist is very limited in how they can self-express. 'Choices Matter' tend to be even more rare, and are usually just 'exploration' with multiple routes to follow.

That said, this isn't a value judgement. I love Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime and other visual novels, I wouldn't be buying them if I didn't. I've read several 'choices matter' choice-of-games that suuuck but the choices undeniably matter. There are valid criticisms you could make of solely self-expressive games, that there's only an illusion of choice and no matter what you do you'll still go through the exact same situations, and that no matter how you 'roleplay' nothing actually changes (though of course that isn't the goal of these styles of games. The 'style' doesn't say anything about how good the game is.

I do think there's a hierarchy of difficulty though. The reason exploration-style games are more common is because it's essentially a simple flowchart of a novel. It's easier to write, the writers need to take fewer choices into account - and so each route can be its own novel. If you go with self-expression, you have to provide a lot of decisions and provide some sort of feedback, even if that feedback isn't plot-breaking (In Our Life, your decisions can change your 'personality' but there's like three decisions that change the _events of the story, and even then only in minor ways). And with Choices Matter - uh, there's a reason these aren't usually visual novels.

Also I mentioned this at the beginning but it's important to emphasize that visual novels aren't exclusively one of these - Lots of 'exploration' based visual novels have a few trivial choices just to get the PC to engage and think about how they'd react; lots of 'self expression' style games have _some_ choices that do in fact matter, like 'who do I date'. The difference between Choices Matter and Exploration might be just a matter of degrees of decisions - you could argue that Scarlet Hollow is ultimately a flowchart of decisions and isn't meaningfully different from a VN like Fate Stay Night. I'd disagree, if only because of how much you can change your relationship with Tabitha based on little choices.

[bobbananaville]

bob's October 25 Post - Ko

_So_ it turns out I'm really bad at starting and sticking to a habit. Was planning to do this weekly, but then I just kind of... never got around to it?

Which is a shame, because @ascindio finished art of Ko, my Tzelicrae character in my Wildsea game! And I want an excuse to share it!

By default, Tzelicrae are meant to be a hive-mind of spiders taking on a humanoid form. And that's cool and all, but also when building your ship it turns out there's an option to make it powered by rats running in a wheel. And I imagined - what if _I_ was those rats.

So now I'm playing a rat-based Tzelicrae named Ko. Ve uses ve/ver pronouns.

I'm so happy. We don't have a working ratwheel on our ship sadly, but Ko has a ratwheel that isn't attached to anything when ve gets stressed.

---

One thing I really like about Wildsea is how level-ups work in the game. Specifically, every session you write down a note about some significant thing your character did. This is a "Milestone". When you get three milestones, you can cash them in to upgrade a skill; or you can cash six milestones in to get an aspect (kind of like a DnD feat). But importantly, each milestone has to be relevant to whatever skill you want to get.

I love this. It really helps inform who the character is. In session one I just happened to be at the wheel when I had to dive beneath the canopy and made that my milestone. In session two Ko got to press the on-button on our new boosters that let us fly, and I made that a milestone. In session 3 Ko had to do some stunts to stay safe amid turbulence during a storm (albeit not in the pilot's seat this time)

At first I hadn't really know what Ko's trajectory was - the concept was just 'rats in a trenchcoat' - but by this point I started noticing Ko was kind of a daredevil and liked flying and doing dangerous stuff. So I started leaning into it, and got six milestones that all related to doing dangerous stunts in the air, which I was able to spend on an aspect that helped Ko become a better pilot.

It feels like levelling up in Skyrim, kind of? But more controlled - milestones have to be based on what you did during a session, but you decide what was important enough in that session to warrant a milestone. Ko becoming the helmsman of the Zoo (that's our ship's name, the Zoo btw) was a natural progression, and I don't think it'd have happened without Wildsea's milestone system.

---

I didn't have a place to fit this in, but here's art by "Aronno Rafid" over on Fiverr (here's a link go commission them they're kool) that I commissioned. I wanted some Wildsea art of a mountain - or an 'island'.

also here's a link to the game Wildsea which I've been having so much fun with it it's such a good game.

[maria-ruta]

I love you Tabithaaaaaa

I hope she quits her jobs and reunites with her youtuber gf and live happily ever after, working as boring clerk or something if she survives lol

anyway, Scarlet Hollow is very cool game by @blacktabbygames

[repetitionandvariation]

STOP! before you make an extreme decision or take drastic action of some kind, think about SIFFRIN

are you:

S - sick?

I - indignant?

F - fatigued?

F - famished?

R - resentful of anyone trying to help you, even loved ones?

I - in a state of distress?

N - needing a hug?

if you answered yes to one or more of the above, fix that and then get back to your big decision!

[bobbananaville]

bob's August 31 Post

Hi i don't know what i'm doing? i don't really know much about tumblr, but i do kind of want to get thoughts and stuff into writing, and show stuff off. Even if it's just one-off random posts that don't have anything to do with anything.

I guess this is kind of a diary? Not gonna talk about IRL stuff, but uh i'll be talking about TTRPGs I'm playing, video games I'm playing, my Magic decks, books (mostly fanfiction these days) I've been reading, etc.

So uh. Hi. Hope this is a good first post (well, second post - i posted some custom magic cards a while back). Will see about posting weekly, just so that i have a place to put my thoughts.

---

I'm playing in two games run by a wonderful DM (and i have no idea if they use tumblr whoops). One of them is Wildsea, and I'll probably get to it in a future post, but the other is a Monster of the Week game. I'm playing with the "Wronged" playbook, a character named "Wren". Her siblings were killed by Bigfoot (or _a_ bigfoot?) and she's suffered from a martyr complex/survivor's guilt/anger issues ever since.

I commissioned this art from @ascindio/@oh-so-youre-a-nerd.

I've been having a lot of fun with her. One of the quirks that ended up developing - originating from a trend of every session starting at a starbucks - is that Wren isn't comfortable going to a coffee place anywhere else. It's not that starbucks coffee is good - it's _okay_ I guess? - but she's the sort of person who needs a point of stability, and knowing that one starbucks is pretty much just like any other helps ground her. When the team goes to a local coffee-spot, or even a different chain of coffee restaurants, she's on-edge, uncomfortable.

I've played other TTRPGs, and I've even gone in-depth about thinking about why characters have the quirks they have and who they are, but Wren's the first time i've actively noticed myself doing it. it might be the format of monster-of-the-week - one of the quirks of the system (and pbta as a whole) is that you choose a playbook and that kind of defines your 'archetype' - but it doesn't encapsulate everything of who you are. No matter what, Wren is someone who has been hurt and whose pain drives them forward - but there's a lot of open space surrounding how she got there, how that pain manifests, and how she moves forward.

And I love thinking about that open space, and trying to fill in those gaps. I did it with dnd characters too, but it sometimes felt like a waste of time to do that - the classes in that game were, to me, just more 'how' than 'who', figuring out 'who they are' ended up with me ignoring the mechanics of my character in favor of their flavor. Not so with MOTW. Not so with Wildsea.

But uh. I'm going to leave my Wildsea character, Ko, to a future post. And I'm going to leave my DnD characters and thoughts on that game to another post (it's not all negative - my favorite character i've played is a dnd character i took from level 1 to 18).

I'm not really sure if I have a conclusion to draw? I'm just kind of rambling. hope it's meaningful to someone else, but even if not I'm glad I wrote it - if nothing else, because @ascindio made some sick art and i wanted to share it and gush a bit about Wren.

uh. yeah. ok bye.

[aroace-polyshow]

[bobbananaville]

_get kicked_

hi btw trying out this reblog thing, still unfamiliar with tumblr.

[bobbananaville]

ISAT MTG Card Ideas

So uh. Not super familiar with tumblr. hope i'm doing it right. but also uh. big fan of In Stars and Time and Magic the Gathering. I saw another person (@eight-freakin-gids) post their MTG ISAT cards, and thought I'd give my own take of it a try.

Cards made with Magic Set Editor

On my end I went with a partner variant - each Hero of Dormont can partner with another Hero of Dormont. If you want to have a commander deck with all heroes, you'll need Siffrin to partner with Loop, Helpful Guide. (Haven't added any images yet, this is just card concepts.)

Some notes for each card:

In a theoretical ISAT set, I'm imagining getting 'trapped in time' being represented by an oubliette-like effect. Mirabelle is immune to that. She also is empowered by her party, and protects her allies - hence, shield counters.

Bonnie was admittedly a bit last minute. Personality-wise they feel more red than green, but their whole 'chef cook' thing and being the support of the group put them as a green card for me. Made their activated ability red though!

Isabeau is the defender of the group (maybe I should have used the Defender as the epithet instead? Not sure). Stronk, but also keeps allies' defenses up. So uh. Damage prevention. Maybe the activated ability should be white instead?

I decided to focus on Odile's ability to deal with anything - she can deal with rock, paper or scissors. So - ignore hexproof, shroud and protection! She can also slow enemies down.

And of course Siffrin! His main benefit is that he gets to keep trying and trying again, and gets experience when he does! And he loops back to the top of the library every time he fails.

Loop is a bit of a bonus card - they were my solution to the 'how can I get all the heroes of Dormont into one EDH deck' question. I decided to make them synergize with Experience counters, so that it made sense for them to partner with Siffrin.