Recently got new character art, and for the first time ever I'm putting them all in the same place. This is Ennie! (insert 'post your OC and let people assume things about them' meme here.) The pictures are in chronological order, starting with the first one from a few years back to the most recent one at the end, which are more than a few months apart in game.
Big thanks to @toivoshi for all the amazing work (fast, detailed, communicative, and so nice about having drawn Ennie so many times). Go commission Toivo, you will not be disappointed! <3
You get to press a button & instantly become one of these, if you want:
A man
A woman
An androgynous person
Some manner of furry
A cartoon character
Some manner of mythical beast
Something amorphous & unknowable
Some manner of mechanical thing
I would not press any button (remain the same)
Other/Show results
Voting ended onAug 27, 2024
If you press the button there is no questions from anyone, nobody refers to your previous self, & no issue is caused beyond learning to be comfortable in your body & choice.
to fight my artblock i decided to redraw some gerard p donelan comics as ds9. but once i started i could not stop....
so heres all deep space 9 of them. lol. again the poses and captions are lifted straight from his comics all i did was put space guys on there! please enjoy
(I don't want to think too hard about how long this has been sat in my inbox. So I won't.)
With the spectre of the Aery looming on the horizon, Ar'telan's misgivings are too loud to ignore.
(m!WoLxHaurchefant)
It was not a proposal he enjoyed.
It wasn’t the first time people had tried to convince him to fight dragons. Even befor ethey had fled Ul’dah, he had kept his silence in Coerthas, but he had be able to deflect before. Aiatar, Isgebind - with both of them he had managed to avoid a fight to the death.
Nidhogg would not be convinced.
It was clear from Hraesvelgr’s words that Nidhogg’s anger was beyond mortal ability to reason with. Perhaps his peers could sway him, but they were equally mired in sadness and grief. He wondered if Tiamat, revered and lost as she was, would be equally weighted down.
Estinien would not understand his concerns. Ysayle might have done, if she had not been shocked into immobility. Alphinaud was young and too detached from the idea of honoured creatures to feel his discomfort. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Ishgard was too zealous, in both hate and belief, to feel the plight of a man who had lived with dragons as kin - parent, friend, guide, historian. Dragons not lost to madness, but mourning all the same.
He wondered if there were any left who did not mourn.
—
They had returned to Ishgard proper, sans Ysayle, to find a way through the veil of wind that surrounded the Aery. the Manufactuary had ideas, with the Ironworks, that Ar’telan was not smart enough to understand. It would take a little time, they said, so Ar’telan found himself alone with his thoughts. Such things did not work well for him in Ishgard.
He walked across the Steps of Faith, eyes taking in the damage from the latest attack. He recognised the wounds that Vishap had left in its assault on the walls. Thought about Ysayle, who had justified her goading and supporting under a veil of righteousness. They thought they were different to each other, and yet could not be more similar.
Ratatoskr would have condemned them both.
—
Central Coerthas was cold, as was the norm in the twisted post-Cala mity climate, but for a mercy it was not actually snowing. Ar’telan trudged along the half-buried path towards Camp Dragonhead, still conflicted. To discuss his misgivings was heresy to Ishgard. Though he did not ascribe to Ishgard’s Halone, it still put all who heard him in danger. Made them complicit. Just as the Crystal Braves had done in Ul’dah, he had become a weapon for his enemies to use against those he cared about, this time of his own making. But he could not ignore the wound that festered in his heart.
—
“Ar’telan!” Haurchefant’s greeting was as enthusiastic as always. Though he did not leap from his chair to embrace him - there were too many eyes in the room for that - Ar’telan could read the desire in the smile that spread across his face. Incorrigible as ever.
“Haurchefant. Have you a moment to speak?” he asked, hands quick around the words. The implication was clear - perhaps clear enough that the Echo translated it, unbidden. In private.
“Of course! Corentiaux, please inform me if an emergency arises,” the knight said, all but launching to his feet as he did so. Corentiaux, clearly misinterpreting the nature of Ar’telan’s visit but still willing to cover for his commander, saluted in acknowledgement and tacitly said nothing.
—
A truly private room was difficult to find in Camp Dragonhead, but the room was empty, at least. The benefit to his signing was that it was harder for nefarious types to eavesdrop upon, but Haurchefant’s words would still be heard clearly enough.
“We have spoken to dragons,” Ar’telan began, which made Haurchefant inhale sharply. “In Dravania. The Great Wyrm Hraesevelgr told us of Nidhogg’s rage.”
“It is quite the rage,” Haurchefant agreed, which made Ar’telan grimace, ears pressed back against his head.
“Yes,” he agreed, a single movement which hurt to say. “Even Hraesvelgr feels it is unquenchable. HJe is so angry that he will let Ishgard persist only so he can punish it further.” He shook his head. “If we are to keep Ishgard safe, Nidhogg- Nidhogg must die.”
“It is a truth Ishgard has long known, yet found impossible to achieve,” Haurchefant said, his voice quiet. Ar’telan had spoken to him of Meracydia before. On his meeting with Midgardsormr. Of all those in Ishggard, only Haurchefant truly understood what it meant for him to say what he did. “And you are uniquely placed to do it, now. Did Hraesvelgr offer aught?” Ar’telan cringed at the question.
“Sorrow and silence,” he replied. “He will not stop us should we try. That is all.” He sighed. “But he is not Tempered. He is all but lost in rage, but there is no primal source. He is of the First Brood. Bahamut is dead. Tiamat is lost. Ratatoskr- Ratatoskr is dust. How can I continue man’s folly and feel justified? How is it right?”
For a moment, Haurchefant was silent. Sombre thought ill-suited the knight, but Ar’telan knew the look. He had worn it when Francel had been accused of heresy.
“Ishgard is not Meracydia,” he said, voice quiet. “If Nidhogg were like those you knew, it would be easy to call it wrong. If he and his horde did not slaughter without thought, the question would be easier. But if he is not Tempered, why does he feel such rage?” Ar’telan swallowed his nerves.
“King Thordan and his knights slaughtered Ratatoskr, and ate her Eyes.”
Haurchefant sat in stunned silence for several long moments. When he regained his wits, his voice was barely audible.
“Unprovoked?”
“Avalon and the dragons lived together before it. Yes. The Echo showed me what they did.”
“And Nidhogg’s ire has lasted a millennia in retaliation,” Haurchefant said, shaking his head in disbelief. “What selfish motives of our ancestors. What bitter damnation to run in our blood.”
“But none of those who live now should bear the weight of that.”
Haurchefant sighed. “No. But equally, what Ishgard began should not fall to you to finish,” he said. “The Azure Dragoon is with you, is he not?” Ar’telan nodded.
“He swore to me he would not attack unprovoked, but… I do not trust him. His rage runs as deep as Nidhogg’s does. He suffered the same loss. The well of anger is bitter and deep.”
“And what did Midgardsormr say?” Haurchefant asked. Dangerous words to speak aloud, and they both knew it. Ar’telan’s ears twitched nervously.
“That Nidhogg was lost. His rage has consumed him for too long. But I can’t- I won’t give up on that hope. I can’t. If he is not Tempered, what traps him is his own mind, his draconic nature. Time feels fleeting, and in the Song, Ratatoskr’s death is yet a raw and open wound. If it could but heal…”
“If his own sire cannot heal that wound, what chance does a mere mortal have?” Haurchefant said. “I know it hurts. That the complexity cuts like a knife, and even with Midgardsormr himself backing your actions, your people - your own heart - may never forgive you.” Of course he would know how it felt. Years under the weight of it, but he had never found an answer either. He had given everything to Ishgard, and still…
“Even if it saves Ishgard, I do not think I can do it,” Ar’telan said, fingers shaking as he formed the words. “Even if I’m the only one that ever could, I… I can’t. I can’t.”
Without a word, Haurchefant closed the scant distance between them and pulled him into a hug. Ar’telan closed his eyes, fingernails catching on the rings of Haurchefant’s armour. It wasn’t an escape. It was never an escape.
“I am sorry, my love,” Haurchefant said, voice barely more than a whisper. “Know that I will not blame you, no matter what action you take. Just… be sure to come home. Do not petition the wall so intently that he consumes you. Please.” Ar’telan’s fingers tightened, just for a moment, and he pulled away.
“I will try,” he said, the movements uncertain. “I… I’m sorry. If it had been anyone else…”
“Then you would not be staring down Nidhogg’s fortress to begin with,” Haurchefant cut across. “Follow your heart. It has led you well enough so far, I would say.” Ar’telan managed a tremulous smile.
“I don’t know if I would agree with that,” he said, “but I will try.” He shook his head, trying to collect his wits. “Thank you. For listening. I know it is not precisely safe for you to hear such heresy.”
“With the news you bear, I wonder that the notion of heresy will last overlong,” Haurchefant said, a bitter undertone to his voice. “I will keep my silence until you return, with whatever fate you bring of the wyrm. But it will not go down easy. This history, or Nidhogg himself.” Ar’telan sighed.
I think an important part of the "D&D is easy to learn" argument is that a lot of those people don't actually know how to play D&D. They know they need to roll a d20 and add some numbers and sometimes they need to roll another type of die for damage. A part of it is the culture of basically fucking around and letting the GM sort it out. Players don't actually feel the need to learn the rules.
Now I don't think the above actually counts as knowing the rules. D&D is a relatively crunchy game that actually rewards system mastery and actually learning how to play D&D well, as in to make mechanically informed tactical decisions and utilizing the mechanics to your advantage, is actually a skill that needs to be learned and cultivated. None of that is to say that you need to be a perfectly tuned CharOp machine to know how to play D&D. But to actually start to make the sorts of decisions D&D as a game rewards you kind of need to know the rules.
And like, a lot of people don't seem to know the rules. They know how to play D&D in the most abstract sense of knowing that they need to say things and sometimes the person scowling at them from behind the screen will ask them to roll a die. But that's hardly engaging with the mechanics of the game, like the actual game part.
And to paraphrase @prokopetz this also contributes to the impression that other games are hard to learn: because a lot of other games don't have the same culture of play of D&D so like instead of letting new players coast by with a shallow understanding of the rules and letting the GM do all the work, they ask players to start making mechanically informed decisions right away. Sure, it can suck for onboarding, but learning from your mistakes can often be a great way to learn.
When you have people that have actually done some reading on the rules vs. people that just coast and foist the majority of the game onto the GM, it makes it appear like the more knowledgeable players are sweaty power-gamers or rules-laywers.
Best example I've got with asking players to make informed decisions was when I ran the Wilderfeast Quick Start. The GM has the info about what ingredients can be gathered in any of the regions, but the party then has to cook it. They know what the ingredient does and just have to make the decision on how they want to combine their ingredients as a party.
#i just wanna play a silly game#i feel like. gatekept. while reading this#i don’t have the drive to read a several hundred pg game manual i just wanna play a game w my friends#like. it’s a game. play it how u want#jeeze
My point is not to say that people who don't want to learn the rules shouldn't play, only that people who don't actually know the rules aren't necessarily engaging with the game to its fullest, especially in the case of a relatively rules-heavy game like D&D, and that as the previous poster mentioned it can actually result in a bad rules dynamic where the DM needs to do more work due to player unwillingness to learn the rules as well as casting players who actually know the rules and can engage with them in unfavorable light. All of these are negative elements of the culture of play surrounding.
Like, there isn't anything meaningfully gatekeepy about saying "players who don't know the rules of the game aren't as good at playing the game as the people who know the rules of the game." Because playing games is a skill that can be cultivated and knowledge of the rules is an important part of that skill.
And respectfully, if the idea of learning the rules of D&D seems like an insurmountable task, you don't have to learn them, but you might actually gain something out of actually making an effort because it can make engaging with the game more rewarding for you. Or if the idea of learning the rules of a game that has hundreds of pages is an insurmountable obstacle, there are lots of games with much more modest page counts! D&D is actually relatively heavy as far as RPGs go but it's not the only RPG, and you can get rewarding mechanical engagement combined with cool stories for a much smaller time investment.
Pointing out that, if you're playing a game with a several-hundred-page rulebook and haven't even made the effort to read the parts of it relevant to your character, then you're pushing a lot of cognitive load onto your friends, isn't gatekeeping. Nobody's kicking you out of your group for it.
i also think that the OP is kind of more about the people who bite back against people going "hey, maybe try something other than D&D" with "but those games are too crunchy/hard to learn" when they don't even really know the actual rules of D&D. i mean, i've had people like this push back against learning PbtA games.
i really hope this was just an unusual case, but i've even had that exist response from one of the local DMs where i live, when i invited him to be a player in a game of Masks i was starting up.
Oh yeah, that was definitely the original context. And it's really funny to hear "learning another game is hard" as a reason for not engaging in game beyond D&D when clearly people are not learning D&D either if they consider the act of reading the rules beyond the pale.
The folks this post is about are the reason you get dudes on Reddit posting about prepping to DM games for 60+ hours a week and still feeling inadequate.
At this point, it’s a fun game for *almost* everyone at the table. And nobody wants to take on the role that has you showing up to game night with a wagon full of paper, an external hard drive, and a heart condition due to anxiety.
Be kind to your GM. Learn bits of the rules and help out :)
Quite so. If you just want to fool around and occasionally roll some shiny math rocks, that's a perfectly cromulent aspiration, and there are plenty of games that will give you exactly that – but if you just want to fool around and occasionally roll some shiny math rocks while simultaneously insisting upon using a rules-heavy system whose rules you refuse to learn, what you're doing in practice is making the GM do all the work of playing your character for you. It isn't gatekeeping to point this out; it's simply a fact. To be sure, there are a few GMs who are receptive to that sort of thing – it's often termed "black box" play in the hobby's jargon, likening the rules to a box the players can't see inside – but most GMs merely tolerate having all the work of making your character happen dumped on them for the sake of avoiding drama. It can be worthwhile to think carefully about whether this is something you're really okay with doing to someone you call a friend.
Like, there's this stereotype of the "play literally any other game" crowd as a bunch of arty snobs who want to force everybody to play semi-freeform Jungian psychodramas about giant telepathic bugs or what-have-you, but in my experience, the greater part of them are folks who've been GMing Dungeons & Dragons for years, and spent that time single-handedly doing all the work of making the game happen, and all they really want is for their group to pick a game whose baked-in expectations regarding mechanical engagement are compatible with the level of engagement they're actually willing to put forth!
I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh... look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn't been updated in nine years, and there's an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it's fantastic.
Seriously, if you think that your choices are either "grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription" or "support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience", I guarantee that it's because you're working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.
Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that's really the only reason people are still recommending it. It's kind of like if people were saying "hey, the iPhone 14 isn't your only smart phone option!" but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that's just newer and better – please don't get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!
ADHD is so embarrassing. I ran out of conditioner and I've been too busy to go buy more so I've been showering without for like 2 days. I just turned around and finally noticed four bottles of conditioner on my shelf. I stocked up. I always stock up. How did I even forget that I stocked up? The bottles just faded into the background. What's wrong with me
I got a neon yellow agenda, a violently pastel purple phone case and my wallet and keys are sparkly. I clipped a AirTag to my keys in a red case.
I removed the doors on the pantry and worked with my partner to setup “zones” ie a specific shelf for paper products and soap , dried goods (rice beans), cans. When I walk by if the zone is empty I know I don’t have stock.
When I walk in my pantry/ laundry space it’s apparent if I’m out of something because there is a gap in the wall of shit. I also walk through there frequently because well… I need to do laundry which means I see what’s missing regularly. And if I notice it’s missing and have my shit together I add it to a shared cloud list of grocery items with my partner. It’s helped me LOADS. Like we no longer have the “&@#?! we already have 17 BOXES OF ALMOND MILK FROM COSTCO. AND I JUST BOUGHT ANOTHER “ problem, and we also have reduced /elimated the “$/@£%?!?!? WE ARE OUT OF DISH SOAP FOR 3 months” problem which has reduced my stress and saved my partner from grief.
I made dedicated spaces for frequently used things like installed a Command hook for my bag, a shelf for my wallet and keys.
I purposely trained myself with my partner (did drills of coming and going) for 15min sessions 4 times over the course of a week where I built a muscle memory for putting commonly lost items in a routine place. Ie, putting my keys and wallet on the hook. Replaced my glasses in the container etc.
It feels and sounds insane but I lose my shit less now and when I do I find it faster!
So many people have adhd but like actually making it easier to function is an accessibility issue which is commonly overlooked. Paint your stuff yellow if it helps, remove cabinet doors, do what makes your life easier. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone if it breaks convention who cares?
you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!
unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!
tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.
bonus rules:
you're not shiny unless the wheel tells you you're shiny
take your pick of regional forms and evolutions (for example, if you roll vulpix, it's up to you whether that means normal or alolan vulpix)
apply whatever logic you like with regards to gender
